October 3, 2024 • 43 mins
The Lysol we know now is sold as disinfectant only. But at one time it was also marketed as a means of birth control. Listen in today to the twisted history of this common household product.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and it's just us. Almost said Jerry's here too,
but she's not. Instead, it's just us. I already said
that too, And this is stuff you should that's right.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
And this was a listener's suggestion. So we wanted to
thank Holland le Mere who wrote in and said, guys,
I don't know if you had anything know anything about
the history of Lysol, the disinfectant, but it has a
pretty fascinating, weird history, and I think it would make
a good episode. And I think Holland was right on
(00:44):
the money.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah. Also thanks to our buddy Kyle Hookstra, our British
writer holding it down in the UK for us, who
helps us out with this one too.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
That's right. I love Kyle's articles because they are all
metric and there's even some to British spellings. He's like,
I'm not going to americanize it for you Trumps, just yeah,
figure it out.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Oh you like your z's ts for you, here's an s.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Aluminum.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah. So yeah, so we're talking today about Lysol. Who
was that Holland great name. Yeah, hall ind suggested this.
And for those of you who don't know, Lysol is
a leading disinfectant brand in the West. I think it's
like the third best selling disinfectant in the United States.
It's Lysol. You know what I'm talking about, right, I do, sure,
(01:35):
I think most people do. And Lysol had a recent
I guess, a big jolt in its history, as most
disinfectants did, thanks to the pandemic, the COVID pandemic of
twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, where its sales just
went through the roof. Apparently it increased its sales by
(01:57):
twelve percent and just one year and they were producing
thirty five million cans, just the cans of Lyesol in
North America alone every month. That's how crazy people were
for Lysol. And yet when pandemic went away, people kind
of put their Lysol away as well. In their sales
(02:17):
storry to go down. And as we'll see, that's actually
kind of a good thing.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Probably. Yeah, And this is not a takedown or anything.
This is just we're gonna talk about some interesting history.
We talk a little bit about how all disinfectants work,
and we might even suggest some alternatives but you're sweet pippy.
So the question of why do you want to disinfect
(02:43):
something in your house in the first place is valid? Well,
it is because if you subscribe to the germ theory,
then you might think that disinfecting surfaces might kill a
virus that might be in your house. So that's a
reason right there, for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
I mean, that's the point of disinfectants, right and the way,
let's talk real quick about how they actually work, because
I find this fascinating.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yeah, it's on a cellular level, right, sure.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
So there's a bunch of different ingredients in disinfectants, like lysol,
but some of them are more active than others. But
you can't overlook one in favor of another because when
you turn around and look, you're like, oh, that does this,
that does this, that kills this, that kills this. But
if you put all of it together, you have a
disinfectant that can kill microbes, that can kill viruses. A
(03:36):
lot of them are anti fungal. They're just they just kill,
like you said, on a cellular level. And one of
the ways that they do that, one of the main
ways they do it is by disrupting whatever outer layer
that microbe or that virus has that protects its inerds,
and by doing that, it's inerds spill out, go through
all sorts of horrible transformations, and the bacteria viruses like
(04:00):
uh A two lysol.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
That's right, and lysol works like you know, all disinfectants
by doing that. But Lysol specifically developed one of the
first quats qu at s. We've talked about quats before
in terms of like pesticides, I think probably, yeah, I
feel like we've talked about that, okay, I believe you,
(04:25):
I just know you, okay. But they introduce a quat
in its formula in the eighteen eighties, a long long
time ago. Quats are it's short for is actually technically
qac YEA. It's spelled out quat because it's a quaternary
ammonium compound. And what they introduced in the eighteen eighties
(04:49):
was one called benzolconium chloride. Pretty active ingredient these days
and disinfectants very potent to all. Quats are rarey potent
against germs at pretty low concentrations I think is about
two point four percent is a sweet spot. But like
you said, you combine these with other stuff and you're
(05:11):
in business. In this case, if you combine it with alcohol,
there's a change that happens that makes it kill things faster,
kill more things. And lysol doesn't use that one anymore.
They use a different one now though, right.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah, it's evolved into benzalconium saccharinate. I think that's right.
And it's essentially just almost a proprietary version of benzolconium
benzelconium chloride, right, But it's just different enough, as we'll
see that it makes lysol kind of its own thing.
(05:46):
And like you said, they add alcohol, and alcohol itself
is a germ killing machine, especially with viruses, because it
just it cuts right through the viral envelope and lets
all the DNA spill out or RNA, and viruses don't
like that kind of thing. One of the other things
that happens too. When the quad and ethanol combine, they
(06:06):
undergo a synergistic change essentially, and they do all sorts
of nasty stuff. Specifically, they d nature cells, which means
that they break the chemical bonds that hold the molecules together,
and again that's not good if you're a bacteria.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Yeah, so like it, the cell wall kind of dissolves,
and then like you said, everything spills out and then
those proteins are just busted up.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah, they coagulate. Different proteins coagulate, which renders them totally useless.
It's not like they can go back to how they were. Like,
the poor bacterium is probably trying to keep its guts
in and yet they're useless even if it could patch
itself up.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Yeah, And a couple of things if you're talking about
the effectiveness of a disinfectant is concentration and the contact time.
So there has to be what's called an MIIC or
a minimum inhibitory concentration. I think we said two point
four percent is like, is the low concentration end where
(07:07):
it's still potent in the case of lyesol, And then
the contact time. If you read the I'm not even
saying just lyesol, but if you read any disinfectant, you
may see in five fine prints something like, you know,
spray and leave it on there for four to ten minutes.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, well, I saw wipes. Depending on which one you have,
it's four minutes or ten minutes. Is crazy.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yeah, And a lot of people don't know this, and
so if they use something like this in their house,
we don't. But if you do, you might just spray
it and wipe it off right afterward, thinking you're accomplishing
something you're not.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
No.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
I read an interview with the microbiologist who is saying,
like when I clean my house like this, like say
I'll spray a door knob, I just let it sit
for a minute before I wipe it off. And usually
with the spray a minute'll do it. But the point is,
it's not like it's just immediate disrupts all germs or
microbial life that it encounters on contact. It takes a
(08:07):
couple of minutes for it to really do its job essentially.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Yeah, for sure, Well you want to.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Take an early breaker, Yeah, let's do it. Okay, we're
gonna take an early break and then we'll come back
and talk about the history of lysol.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Softy jobh so so Chuck.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I believe Holland said that lysol has a very interesting history.
And Holland was right. And it's a pretty old history too.
I think it was invented in eighteen eighty nine by
Gustav Roppenstrouk.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah, did I get it?
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Pretty dang good, buddy, Ziagut, Well, oh.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Thank you very much, And he was a German chemist, yes,
and he was like, you know, we've got all sorts
of infectious diseases. Most people call them diseases, and but
he just spoke really strangely, and he said, I'm going
to come up with something to help, specifically in the
medical setting, a disinfectant that's going to save lives.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
That's right Lyesol back in those days was fifty percent
creasole in soap, basically so pontified vegetable oil. I kind
of figured that was like lie from soap and sold
from the creasol is where you got lysol. But that's
not right either, is it. No?
Speaker 2 (09:45):
And as a matter of fact, I have not seen
a definitive answer.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Oh, I thought you sent me something.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I did, and then I saw other stuff elsewhere that
undermined Oh, I guess it. The one that I'm on
is that the lie is short for lysis, which is
basically like destroying a cell, and then the saw is
short for solvent. That's what I'm on. But again there's
different interpretations. What's the one I sent you? You remember
(10:15):
and know what you sent me?
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Or no? Maybe, okay, maybe there's not.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Other interpretations. I've just totally lost my mind, and that's it.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
It may be it. It was toxic back then with
that mixture. Cresol was a germ killer and it was
less poisonous what they had been using to disinfect things
like hospitals at the time, which was carbolic acid. So
it was a little bit better version of that, but
it was it was like a brown, a very brown color,
(10:45):
and it kind of kind of became the go to
antiseptic in the late eighteen hundreds for the medical community.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yeah, an eighteen ninety three report said, let's defend ourselves
in our homes against the Hama sidle microbe exclamation point
even and the British Medical Journal was on board that
went's still around, that's how legit this is. They were like, yeah,
use it on your skin, it'll treat lupus, but beware
because if you use it too much, it's kind of
(11:14):
caustic and it can crack your skin. And for the
longest time, essentially from invention until the nineteen teens, the
people who bought this stuff were medical professionals, and they
bought it in the ultra concentrated form. I think you like,
the smallest bottle would turn into two gallons when you
(11:35):
mixed it together with each other like you were supposed
to then so on and so forth, and it was
just a It was what they used for cleaning wounds
and all sorts of stuff like it was like the
original back Team, but way more caustic.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Yeah. Yeah, Things change in nineteen twelve, or started to
change in nineteen twelve when the AMA Council on Pharmacy
and Chemistry said, you know a lot of these patients
are screaming when we put it on their skin. It's
burning them, clearly because we have eyes and ears, and
this might be too dangerous for human use, so maybe
(12:12):
we shouldn't use it in hospitals. Lynn and Fink, who
were making Lysol at the time, were like, oh crap,
this is our big market. Here is marketing to these hospitals, right,
And so here's what we'll do. We'll reposition it in
the marketplace and through advertising as something for home use
(12:33):
and for use on women's reproductive organs.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Yes, yes, let's talk about that, because there was essentially
no point in the history of Lyesol that it should
ever have been used on women's reproductive organs. And yet
when they lost that market of selling directly to hospitals
who knew that the field of medicine had its own
journals and that they would start talking amongst themselves. They
(13:01):
essentially created, they re debuted their product as a contraceptive.
And at the time this was not completely off the wall.
Using a vaginal douche as a contraceptive. There's no way
for me to say that and not feel like I'm
talking about a guy, a guy, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
It's really taken over.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, it has that. This was like the main way
that people prevented birth, and it didn't even work very well,
but this was like all they had at the time.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Essentially, yeah, it was contraception. Well, this is sort of
one of the early ironies is you could sell lysol
as a cleaner, you know, those influenza in the early
nineteen hundreds and nineteen teen, so like it was doing
great there, but you could not market it legally as
(13:54):
a contraceptive, not because it was dangerous and didn't work,
but because contraceptives were illegal in the US and Canada
from the late nineteenth century eighteen seventy three with a
Comstock Act here. In the US, birth control eventually was
legalized in nineteen sixty five if you were married, if
you wanted to have sex out of marriage and not
(14:15):
get pregnant, you had to wait until nineteen seventy two
to get that approval, one year after I was born,
which is shocking. So from nineteen nineteen all the way
through the nineteen sixties, they promoted lysol as an illegal
contraceptive under the banner of the mythological term of feminine hygiene.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Right, and so just because they used that term and
never said this is a contraceptive, they instead said it
with like a wink and a nuts like we all
know what we're talking about, right, And consumers did know.
They were well aware that what Lysol was saying is like,
if you use this after sex, it's going to kill
(15:01):
anything inside. Right, So don't even worry about all this stuff.
It's your contraceptive and lysol. Lysol became the number one
contraceptive in the United States from the nineteen thirties through
the nineteen sixties. Chuck lysol. Douching with lysol was what
(15:22):
most people in the United States used as a contraceptive
for thirty years.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Yeah, and by the way, I want to clear up
real quick, when I said the mythological concept of feminine hygiene.
I don't mean people shouldn't wash their body parts, of course, sure,
I'm talking about this idea of feminine hygiene products and
douching and douching as a contraceptive and all that stuff was,
as far as I can tell, a creation, like a
(15:50):
marketing creation.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yeah. What's ironic about it is that because you're using
lysol again as a douche, you're killing off all of
the beneficial bacteria in the vagina to begin with. So
you actually are creating the problems that feminine hygiene products
were supposed to cure. Help. So the market actually created
(16:17):
itself by this, just the introduction of this. It's nuts.
It's terrible. It's essentially taking advantage of insecure mid century
American women through a really harsh marketing campaign that lasted
for decades.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Oh yeah, let's talk about some of that. There's a
historian name Kristen Hall who looked at you, just dozens
and dozens of these lysol advertisements from the day, and
here are just a few examples. And the married woman,
the cleansing antiseptic douche should follow married relations. Lysol is
the right antiseptic for this delicate purpose. The word germ
(16:59):
was sort of a stand in for semen in many
cases they had They had ads that are just so
clearly trying to exploit, like you said, like the idea
that marital life is the only way to go, and
a clean woman in the kitchen is one that will
appeal to her husband for intercourse. Like this one. It
(17:22):
showed a woman literally trapped in an ad, trapped in
a cobweb that said was spun by my husband's indifference
and until she's freed by using Lysol to address careless risks,
then you know, dot dot, she won't get sex from
her husband. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
So what the ad was essentially saying is their husband's like,
I'm not having another kid. I'd rather just go without
sex than have another kid. And the wife is like,
but I want sex, And Liesol's like, let us step in.
You start using Lysol. You tell your husband you're going
to use Lysol, he'll be all over you like white
on rice.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Yeah. Basically, if you're if if you don't use lysow,
you're not going to have sex anymore and be happy
in your marriage exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
So this was like the marketing campaign that Lysol came
up with to get women to use Lysol as a contraceptive,
and it should be noted that at the same time
they were marketing it as a disinfectant for your house, right,
So it would be exactly like buying a jug of
lysol and using it to clean your kitchen and then
(18:28):
using it as a contraceptive the same jug. That was
essentially what was going on for these decades.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Well, yeah, and like you mentioned earlier, not only was dangerous,
as we'll see, but it didn't work. They had these
a study from nineteen thirty three, so this is even
back then they knew, right, and they found basically half
two hundred and fifty of the five hundred and seven
women who used lysol as a contraceptive douche became pregnant.
(18:56):
And in the nineteen thirties there were these two doctors,
Sarah Greenberg and Rachel Lynn Palmer that said Lysol's claims
would be laughable were it not for the tragedy of
the many women who have become pregnant.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
But not just get pregnant. They were also like scarring
their vaginas internally, at the very least inflaming them. Some
women died because if you absorbed some of these things
like qacs and some of the other chemicals I'm sure
probably ethanol as well into your body through the very
(19:29):
porous vaginal tissue. You can die from poisoning from lysol poisoning,
and women were dying at the very least hundreds were
ending up in the hospital from it as well.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Yeah, and if that's not bad enough, because of kresol,
the creasol in the lysol, it was used for illegal
abortions well into the twentieth century.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Right, And so, like you said, from the thirties, they
were it was being criticized by the medical community, yet
it just wasn't reaching out to the public at large yet.
And it wasn't until the sixties that people stopped using
lysol as a contraceptive almost overnight. And what happened the
next day when they stopped using lysol was that the
(20:16):
pill had just been introduced, and as it became legal
and widespread and people started to be like, this actually works,
they stopped using lysol immediately.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yeah, So lysol didn't stop being used as a contravaginal
contraceptive because it was the word spread that it was dangerous,
it didn't work. It stopped because the pill came along exactly,
which is really hard to believe.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Really, I'll tell you something that's not hard to believe,
Chuck is let's take our second break.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Oh another early one. I love it.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
Stop jaw.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
All right, so we're back, Lysol. If you remember from
Act two, I guess the fact that it was not
viable as a means of birth control after the pill
came along, or really before actually, in truth, meant that
it had to change their tune yet again. It gained
(21:32):
some ubiquity, being referenced in a Sylvia Plath poem The
Colossus in the nineteen fifties. It was it was just
a something that seems like it's always been around. There
have been different forms of it over the years. You
know that disinfectant spray has been around since the sixties sixties.
I think they started cleaning toilets with it in the sixties.
(21:52):
Eventually they started having the hand soaps and disinfecting wipes
and stuff like that. But they were like, how do
we sell this stuff in an age where the FTC
basically is endorsing or says that you know your claims
have to be true. You can't be misled, The harm
(22:13):
can't outweigh the benefit and stuff like that, like where
what's the new path forward?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Right? So essentially because of this stuff like disinfectants like
lysol and other brands started just tinkering with their formulas
and looking for things that were as effective or more
effective but less toxic. Like for example, in nineteen fifty two,
they dropped creasol for ortho hydroxy phenol, which is a
(22:42):
quarter as toxic as creol. But I mean, you start
doing that, it's like these little adjustments here or there,
you start making significant gains and lowering toxicity. The thing is,
it still is hazardous to your health, depending on how
you're dis to it and what concentration you're exposed to.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Yeah, for sure. And obviously a time when you heard
a lot more about this kind of thing was during,
like you mentioned earlier, the onset of the pandemic from
COVID nineteen. People were buying a lot more disinfectant I
now you said there was a twelve point three increase
in sales that just dollars wise equates to about four
billion bucks American bucks. Yeah, so it's a lot of money.
(23:27):
So you know, obviously with this stuff being used, like
people were disinfecting everything. The CDC was getting a lot
more calls about people going to the hospital from poisoning
just because it's around more. There were plenty of stories
where people would use disinfectants on like on their food itself,
putting it on their skin. At one point, former President
(23:52):
Trump on Live on the Air pondered whether injecting disinfectants
could cure coronavirus. So there's just a lot out of
overuse of this kind of stuff at the time because
of COVID.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Yeah, and he didn't name check Lysol, he said disinfectants,
But Lysol and other companies that make disinfectants issue press
releases basically immediately saying like, don't ingest disinfectants in any way,
shape or form. They're still toxic. And these companies didn't
say they're still very toxic. But depending on who you ask,
they can be pretty toxic. One of the things that
(24:25):
Lysol did get a boost from though, was remember I
said that their QAC is almost proprietary, the benzolconium securate, Well,
it's just different enough from the other versions of that
that Lysol was able to submit itself its formula to
the CDC for testing on killing COVID, and the CDC
(24:48):
was like, all good, So now COVID could be like recommended.
Lysol is specifically recommended by the CDC for you know,
the pandemic, and that was one of the things that
led to Lysol specifically in this huge boom in sales.
Was a pretty smart little marketing maneuver.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
No, absolutely so a big boon for sales obviously. But
in twenty twenty one, the CDC came out and we're like, hey,
you know, this obsessive disinfecting is maybe getting out of
hand and may have long lasting consequences. And this is
where we, you know, we get to talk about something
that we've talked about on the show before, which I always,
(25:28):
you know, I think is kind of super interesting, which
is the fact that when you disinfect something like that,
you're killing good germs and bad germs. And there is
the hypothesis of the fact that you know, like friendly
microorganisms are good for the body, especially in childhood, to
(25:49):
help you build up a more robust immune system, so
you're not just walking around in a completely sanitized situation
at all times, and then when you encounter something in
the real world, all of a sudden, you're getting sick
more often and maybe even worse.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah, like you said, even worse. And that hygiene hypothesis
is supported by this idea that because these kids are
growing up in overly sanitary conditions in like the industrialized world,
they are more prone by far to autoimmune diseases, which
are diseases that the body is attacking the wrong stuff, proteins, tissues,
(26:27):
things that shouldn't be attacking. So you've got things like
food allergies, type one diabetes, multiple sclerosis, all of them
are much higher prevalents in the West than they are
in less developed countries. I think Kyle found a study
that found that in the West, preschool children can have
(26:48):
up to ten percent of a class can have food allergies,
but in mainland China you're going to find something like
two percent. And that type one diabetes, which is your body,
your immune is attacking your insulin producing pancreas. Sixty two
out of every one hundred thousand kids in Finland, an
industrialized country, has type one diabetes, but six point two,
(27:12):
like a tenth out of every one hundred thousand children
in Mexico have it, and zero point five of every
hundred thousand havebit in Pakistan. So all that goes to
show all these and tons of other studies suggest that
because we're cleaning too much, our kids are developing autoimmune
diseases and we need to expose them to more germs.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yeah. That is a version of what's called the old
friends hypothesis, which is, if you're a young kid in
your early years and your formative years, if you have
regular exposure to harmless microbes, then you're going to be
better off in the long run. And if that's really
limited because you're disinfecting your entire house constantly, you're going
(27:54):
to suffer for it. Because you know, there are arguments.
This guy named Graham Rook is one of the proponents.
Argues that your immune system needs dis exposure to diverse
microbes so your body knows how to recognize the threat
when it sees it.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, and he was saying this, Graham Rook in particularly
is a bacteriologists from University College of London. He's saying
there's specific microbes that the human immune system has co
evolved with and that we're killing them through disinfectant and
that those are the ones that train our immune systems
how to be and that without them that's why we're
(28:30):
getting the autoimmune diseases. And yet again it's like a
riff on the hygiene hypothsis. It almost takes it and
like makes it more specific.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
I think, yeah, they've done some more research. Speaking of Finland,
they took stool samples. They took little poopy pellets from
kids in Finland, Estonia, and Russia and found that in
the in Finland, which is you know, super industrialized at
this point. In Estonia, they did not have Escherishia.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
I don't know e coli. I know that's what most
people call it.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
I'll just call it ecoliles trying to be fancy that
activates a response from the immune system, but had a
bacteria bacteriotis species that inhibits the immune system. So not
only did it not have what you needed to activate
the immune response, you had something that inhibits it.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Right, So again there's a lot of research to support
this kind of stuff that we are overcleaning, and in
particular in the United States, we have a particular obsession
with cleanliness and we overdo it essentially. And again, just
like with Lysol's advertising blitz in the twenties and thirties
(29:44):
that got women to use lysol as a contraceptive based
on their insecurities. We're marketed to like, there's germs everywhere,
your kid's going to get sick, your kid is sneezing
on things. They've got to clean the entire house, and
not just clean, but disinfect And it seems to be
if the hygiene hypothesis and old Friend's hypothesis are correct.
(30:06):
It's the disinfecting part that's the problem. That if we
just cleaned, you know, and kept things tidy, we would
those good microbes would be around, and we are exposed
to them. We don't have to worry as much about
the other microbes that are harmful because our immune systems
are primed to take care of those things a little more.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
That's right, And I know I mentioned it before. It
is one percent anecdotal. I'm not disputing that. But we
have never been big overly disinfectant as a household. We
have let my daughter be dirty and stay dirty, and
she's one of the healthiest kids I've ever known in
(30:49):
my life. Again, purely anecdotal, but who knows. I think
maybe we're just lazy, but it feels like it feels
like we've done right by her. Because she just not
get sick much.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
That's awesome, man. Yeah, yeah, that hygiene hypothesis. I just
love it. It's so intuitive, it's so like folksy and homey.
I just love it. So I hope it's correct. I
hope it doesn't ever get overturned.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Yeah, I mean, what do we do When we were kids,
We rolled around in the dirt. Our parents weren't bothered
to care or you know, maybe we've got to wash
your hands before dinner kind of thing, but maybe not even.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Yeah, no, for sure. And I mean the generation after us,
where we started cleaning more and more with disinfectants, that's
when autoimmune diseases really starting to pick up. It's just
the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming, essentially. Yeah, there's some other
stuff too. Like I said, some people are like, yeah,
this stuff is still toxic, so be careful with it.
(31:49):
Some people are saying, like, Okay, it depends on the
concentration that you're exposed to. Lifsol that's super concentrated that
you're supposed to dilute. That is very dangerous stuff. There's
endocrine disruptors in there, there's anti freeze in there. You
can breathe it in you can absorb it through your skin.
Just undiluted lysol or concentrated lysol is dangerous. But what's
(32:13):
called ready to use, the stuff you buy in the
bottle that you just start spraying that is so diluted
that it's more toxic effects are well, they're diluted essentially.
So some people say it's not really a problem to
use lysol. Other people are like, it depends on the context.
(32:34):
If you spray lysol air spray in a closed room,
you don't want to be in there to breathe it
in because it's going to mess your lungs up pretty good.
Other people are like, like, we know that these this
exposure to lysol right then is not harmful, but there's
not enough studies on what's called chronic low level exposure.
(32:57):
But just using it over and over and over again
for years, what does that do to the body, And
so we need to study that kind of stuff more. Unfortunately,
there are people in the government who are working against
that kind of stuff and introducing bills that are like,
not only do we not want to combat this, we
(33:18):
want to make disinfectant manufacturers, we want to make it
easier for them to just cover up what they're using
as ingredients so people can't study them.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Yeah, what was that? I saw it sort of. I
mean it seemed like it was directly influenced from the
lobby from these companies. But who was it that introduced
that bill that basically said, like, hey, you know what,
you shouldn't have to say what ingredients are in your product.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah, Indiana Representative congress Person Larry Bouchon introduced a bill
in October twenty twenty three. Still doesn't have a name. Weirdly,
it doesn't even have a number, so I guess it's
not gotten very far so far. But what it represents
is a real disruption in the disinfected industry because California
(34:06):
passed a law that was really hardcore about telling everybody
what's in your products as disinfectants, And there was a
big kind of stakeholder back and forth between dis infectant
manufacturers and the government of California to kind of come
to this consensus like, Okay, we'll abide by California's law
(34:27):
essentially everywhere in the United States, but the rest of
the states have to promise that they're not going to
make any laws. There are even tougher than California. We're
all going to agree that this California law is a compromise,
and so this federal bill preempts the California law, so
it undoes all that negotiation. So some companies, including the
(34:48):
makers of Lifesol, are like, yes, let's support that bill.
But other companies like Clorox have come forward and they're like,
we're opposed to this bill. We already went through this
whole process, we came to a compromise, and this conceivably
open up the case for states later on to come
up with even worse bills or stricter bills than the
California one. So it's a big deal actually in the
(35:10):
disinfected industry right now, and it's kind of up in
the air which way it'll go.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
Oh, I'm sure. Another thing that's a potential future well
in the future is kind of now because already being used.
But germicidal ultraviolet light GUV is something a lot of
people are fairly hot on UV rays and things like
that we know can be or UV light can be dangerous.
That's why we use sunblock and stuff like that. But
(35:38):
this is a different kind of UV. This is called
far UV. They are applied in very specifically short wavelengths,
so it's not penetrating like regular UV. And I even
bought one of those little UV cases that you put
your cell phone in during the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah, I got it too.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
Yeah, I think I used it twice, oh really, and
recently donated it. It just never caught on in my house.
But you know, you gotta be careful with these things
because they you could buy like a UV wand to
just wave over your doorknob at home, but it may
not be far UV. And a lot of the FDA
is like, hey, be careful with these things that you're
(36:19):
buying because UV light can be super dangerous as.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Well, Yeah, to your skin, to your eyes essentially, you know,
over long term exposure. Who knows, cancer probably, But this
this far UV, because the wave links are so small,
They're like, this can't penetrate skin or the cornea essentially,
So it's it will kill all the germs, all the
bacteria in the air. That's the other benefit of it too, Chuck.
(36:47):
It's like if you and I are talking and one
of us has COVID and I cough in a room
that has a correct setup for far UV, GUV, germicidal
UV like you said, it'll kill that stuff before you
can breathe it in.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
So it has a really great benefit and application, but
it can also still be dangerous because what they figured
out is that even far UV creates ozone, and ozone
can interact with other particles in the air, creating air
pollution essentially inside your house. Yeah, and that's not good.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
That's not good at all.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
So they're grappling with it.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Emily, when she had her business use and we still
use this at home. Sometimes she would just make her
own She called the alcohol and orange. It was just
alcohol with orange essential oil to help it smell good, right,
And would just use that on the tables and stuff
when she had stainless steel tables when she was manufacturing stuff.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Yeah, and I'm sure she added water too, but I
did not realize this until researching this. Alcohol by itself
is not as effective in killing viruses or destroying viruses
as alcohol and water is. It does something to enhance
the action of the alcohol. Isn't that fascinating?
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Yeah? And remember during COVID, we did some episodes sort
of around that that where we were like, you know,
washing our hands with soap is more effective than using
the alcohol based hand sanitizer.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Yeah, because it binds to it and washes it off. Right,
that's right, that is something I need to get over.
It's very clear to me I developed a real severe
case of germophobia during COVID. Really it's gotten much better,
much better, but it's still present. Like I'll grab a
paper towel and use that to pump gas with and
(38:42):
then use alcohol on my hands afterward, and like there's
just stuff I should not be doing. And researching this
made me realize, like I need to mellow out.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Yeah, yeah, well that's good. But I don't use hand
sanitizer and never really have, but I do. We'll use
the paper towel if they have them at the gas station,
because I don't want grubby gas smell on me why.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
I'm doing it, And I will grab one on my.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Way out of a like especially like an airport bathroom,
I'll grab a paper towel or the paper towel that
I've used to dry my hands. I might use that
on the door handle, because that's I think that's why
they keep that trash can right by the door as well, right.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Yeah, exactly, yes, if they're like that, not if there's
not paper towels. And you ever open the bathroom door
in a public restroom and I suddenly pop out around you,
it's because I've been standing there waiting for somebody to
open the door because I won't let myself touch the
door handle. I just can't. I can't do it. Or
if I'm the guy who like holds the door for
you with this foot and it's like, oh sorry, runs off.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
That's okay. I think a lot of people do stuff
like that. That's just you know, especially like in airport's
you know, people are traveling all over their place. I
don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
No, but yeah, I just need to be less delicate.
I think. I think it would be better for me
psychologically and health wise too.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
Yeah. Maybe get to some of that worry out of
the old brain.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Exactly exactly what's the worst is gonna happen? I could
die of norovirus?
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Who writ Oh man, I'd have to find a new
co host.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Don't do that, Like I said, who cares, Chuck? You
got anything else?
Speaker 3 (40:23):
M okay?
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Well that's it for Lisol everybody. Thanks again to holland
thanks again for Kyle for helping us out with this
and since I just named check Kyle again, it's time
for listener mail.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
I'm going to call this just a very kind thank you. Hey, guys,
want to say thanks for doing what you do. Your humor, intellect,
and open mindedness have been an inspiration for me for
many years. I started listening back in nine when I
was traveling back and forth between Gainesville and Tallahassee, Florida
to visit my college girlfriend. When I graduated, I continued
listening through med school, when driving two rotations, visiting my
(40:59):
mail school girlfriend, and anytime I could find a break
during the monotony of studying. Still listen regularly during my
residency and obstetrics and gynecology, especially when driving the satellite
hospitals I worked at, and of course flying back to
Florida to visit my residency girlfriend. Things are progressing, you
(41:20):
notice this? Yeah? For both?
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Is it the same girlfriend? Do you think?
Speaker 3 (41:24):
Yeah? I mean things are progressing romantically and professionally for
this couple. Gotcha, it's a great story. I finished residency
in twenty eighteen. Still listen almost every day when I'm
driving to the hospital or my office where I work
as an obgyn. Married that residency girlfriend nice, and we
have three beautiful kids who are in med school. No
just kidding, twin boys and our seven month old baby girl.
(41:49):
Listen to all the episodes at once. Listen to the
End of the World with Josh Clark. Thanks, yeehaw. Many
episodes of movie Crush, yeehaw. Lots of Don't Be Dumbs? Okay,
what's wrong with Don't Be Dumbs? No, Don't Be Dumbs
are great. I just anytime someone has dived into the videos,
I think it's pretty like extra.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
They're hardcore for sure.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
Yeah, I wasn't saying it was something. In fact, Don't
Be was the best of what happened in our video
were your Don't be Dumbs?
Speaker 2 (42:19):
I don't know, man, what about our this day in
history weirdness?
Speaker 3 (42:26):
I always felt like we were just hanging on by
the skin of our teeth. We definitely were. Anyway, watch
Don't Be Dumb. If you haven't, everyone, it's pretty great.
I haven't dug up the TV show yet, but maybe
one day I will. One day I will. I have
your book, but sadly not your board game. Not to
go parasocial on you, guys, but I really like you.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
We like you too.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
Your constant motivation to continue to be better in all
aspects of your lives, and your openness therein has been
an inspiration. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you,
and that is from Adam.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Thanks a lot, Adam, that was a great email. Appreciate that.
Congratulations on becoming a doctor. Bless you for that. Bless
your wife too, Bless your kids as well for having
doctor parents.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
Bless everybody med school.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
Girlfriend. I think is a great name for an indie
pop band.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
Totally yeah, nailed it.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
So thanks for that too, Adam. If you want to
be like Adam and send us a really nice email,
we are always happy to receive those. You can wrap
it up, spank it on the bottom like a obg
y n, and send it off to Stuff podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and it's just us. Almost said Jerry's here too,
but she's not. Instead, it's just us. I already said
that too, And this is stuff you should that's right.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
And this was a listener's suggestion. So we wanted to
thank Holland le Mere who wrote in and said, guys,
I don't know if you had anything know anything about
the history of Lysol, the disinfectant, but it has a
pretty fascinating, weird history, and I think it would make
a good episode. And I think Holland was right on
(00:44):
the money.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah. Also thanks to our buddy Kyle Hookstra, our British
writer holding it down in the UK for us, who
helps us out with this one too.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
That's right. I love Kyle's articles because they are all
metric and there's even some to British spellings. He's like,
I'm not going to americanize it for you Trumps, just yeah,
figure it out.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Oh you like your z's ts for you, here's an s.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Aluminum.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah. So yeah, so we're talking today about Lysol. Who
was that Holland great name. Yeah, hall ind suggested this.
And for those of you who don't know, Lysol is
a leading disinfectant brand in the West. I think it's
like the third best selling disinfectant in the United States.
It's Lysol. You know what I'm talking about, right, I do, sure,
(01:35):
I think most people do. And Lysol had a recent
I guess, a big jolt in its history, as most
disinfectants did, thanks to the pandemic, the COVID pandemic of
twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, where its sales just
went through the roof. Apparently it increased its sales by
(01:57):
twelve percent and just one year and they were producing
thirty five million cans, just the cans of Lyesol in
North America alone every month. That's how crazy people were
for Lysol. And yet when pandemic went away, people kind
of put their Lysol away as well. In their sales
(02:17):
storry to go down. And as we'll see, that's actually
kind of a good thing.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Probably. Yeah, And this is not a takedown or anything.
This is just we're gonna talk about some interesting history.
We talk a little bit about how all disinfectants work,
and we might even suggest some alternatives but you're sweet pippy.
So the question of why do you want to disinfect
(02:43):
something in your house in the first place is valid? Well,
it is because if you subscribe to the germ theory,
then you might think that disinfecting surfaces might kill a
virus that might be in your house. So that's a
reason right there, for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
I mean, that's the point of disinfectants, right and the way,
let's talk real quick about how they actually work, because
I find this fascinating.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yeah, it's on a cellular level, right, sure.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
So there's a bunch of different ingredients in disinfectants, like lysol,
but some of them are more active than others. But
you can't overlook one in favor of another because when
you turn around and look, you're like, oh, that does this,
that does this, that kills this, that kills this. But
if you put all of it together, you have a
disinfectant that can kill microbes, that can kill viruses. A
(03:36):
lot of them are anti fungal. They're just they just kill,
like you said, on a cellular level. And one of
the ways that they do that, one of the main
ways they do it is by disrupting whatever outer layer
that microbe or that virus has that protects its inerds,
and by doing that, it's inerds spill out, go through
all sorts of horrible transformations, and the bacteria viruses like
(04:00):
uh A two lysol.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
That's right, and lysol works like you know, all disinfectants
by doing that. But Lysol specifically developed one of the
first quats qu at s. We've talked about quats before
in terms of like pesticides, I think probably, yeah, I
feel like we've talked about that, okay, I believe you,
(04:25):
I just know you, okay. But they introduce a quat
in its formula in the eighteen eighties, a long long
time ago. Quats are it's short for is actually technically
qac YEA. It's spelled out quat because it's a quaternary
ammonium compound. And what they introduced in the eighteen eighties
(04:49):
was one called benzolconium chloride. Pretty active ingredient these days
and disinfectants very potent to all. Quats are rarey potent
against germs at pretty low concentrations I think is about
two point four percent is a sweet spot. But like
you said, you combine these with other stuff and you're
(05:11):
in business. In this case, if you combine it with alcohol,
there's a change that happens that makes it kill things faster,
kill more things. And lysol doesn't use that one anymore.
They use a different one now though, right.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah, it's evolved into benzalconium saccharinate. I think that's right.
And it's essentially just almost a proprietary version of benzolconium
benzelconium chloride, right, But it's just different enough, as we'll
see that it makes lysol kind of its own thing.
(05:46):
And like you said, they add alcohol, and alcohol itself
is a germ killing machine, especially with viruses, because it
just it cuts right through the viral envelope and lets
all the DNA spill out or RNA, and viruses don't
like that kind of thing. One of the other things
that happens too. When the quad and ethanol combine, they
(06:06):
undergo a synergistic change essentially, and they do all sorts
of nasty stuff. Specifically, they d nature cells, which means
that they break the chemical bonds that hold the molecules together,
and again that's not good if you're a bacteria.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Yeah, so like it, the cell wall kind of dissolves,
and then like you said, everything spills out and then
those proteins are just busted up.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah, they coagulate. Different proteins coagulate, which renders them totally useless.
It's not like they can go back to how they were. Like,
the poor bacterium is probably trying to keep its guts
in and yet they're useless even if it could patch
itself up.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Yeah, And a couple of things if you're talking about
the effectiveness of a disinfectant is concentration and the contact time.
So there has to be what's called an MIIC or
a minimum inhibitory concentration. I think we said two point
four percent is like, is the low concentration end where
(07:07):
it's still potent in the case of lyesol, And then
the contact time. If you read the I'm not even
saying just lyesol, but if you read any disinfectant, you
may see in five fine prints something like, you know,
spray and leave it on there for four to ten minutes.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, well, I saw wipes. Depending on which one you have,
it's four minutes or ten minutes. Is crazy.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yeah, And a lot of people don't know this, and
so if they use something like this in their house,
we don't. But if you do, you might just spray
it and wipe it off right afterward, thinking you're accomplishing
something you're not.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
No.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
I read an interview with the microbiologist who is saying,
like when I clean my house like this, like say
I'll spray a door knob, I just let it sit
for a minute before I wipe it off. And usually
with the spray a minute'll do it. But the point is,
it's not like it's just immediate disrupts all germs or
microbial life that it encounters on contact. It takes a
(08:07):
couple of minutes for it to really do its job essentially.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Yeah, for sure, Well you want to.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Take an early breaker, Yeah, let's do it. Okay, we're
gonna take an early break and then we'll come back
and talk about the history of lysol.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Softy jobh so so Chuck.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I believe Holland said that lysol has a very interesting history.
And Holland was right. And it's a pretty old history too.
I think it was invented in eighteen eighty nine by
Gustav Roppenstrouk.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah, did I get it?
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Pretty dang good, buddy, Ziagut, Well, oh.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Thank you very much, And he was a German chemist, yes,
and he was like, you know, we've got all sorts
of infectious diseases. Most people call them diseases, and but
he just spoke really strangely, and he said, I'm going
to come up with something to help, specifically in the
medical setting, a disinfectant that's going to save lives.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
That's right Lyesol back in those days was fifty percent
creasole in soap, basically so pontified vegetable oil. I kind
of figured that was like lie from soap and sold
from the creasol is where you got lysol. But that's
not right either, is it. No?
Speaker 2 (09:45):
And as a matter of fact, I have not seen
a definitive answer.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Oh, I thought you sent me something.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I did, and then I saw other stuff elsewhere that
undermined Oh, I guess it. The one that I'm on
is that the lie is short for lysis, which is
basically like destroying a cell, and then the saw is
short for solvent. That's what I'm on. But again there's
different interpretations. What's the one I sent you? You remember
(10:15):
and know what you sent me?
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Or no? Maybe, okay, maybe there's not.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Other interpretations. I've just totally lost my mind, and that's it.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
It may be it. It was toxic back then with
that mixture. Cresol was a germ killer and it was
less poisonous what they had been using to disinfect things
like hospitals at the time, which was carbolic acid. So
it was a little bit better version of that, but
it was it was like a brown, a very brown color,
(10:45):
and it kind of kind of became the go to
antiseptic in the late eighteen hundreds for the medical community.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yeah, an eighteen ninety three report said, let's defend ourselves
in our homes against the Hama sidle microbe exclamation point
even and the British Medical Journal was on board that
went's still around, that's how legit this is. They were like, yeah,
use it on your skin, it'll treat lupus, but beware
because if you use it too much, it's kind of
(11:14):
caustic and it can crack your skin. And for the
longest time, essentially from invention until the nineteen teens, the
people who bought this stuff were medical professionals, and they
bought it in the ultra concentrated form. I think you like,
the smallest bottle would turn into two gallons when you
(11:35):
mixed it together with each other like you were supposed
to then so on and so forth, and it was
just a It was what they used for cleaning wounds
and all sorts of stuff like it was like the
original back Team, but way more caustic.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Yeah. Yeah, Things change in nineteen twelve, or started to
change in nineteen twelve when the AMA Council on Pharmacy
and Chemistry said, you know a lot of these patients
are screaming when we put it on their skin. It's
burning them, clearly because we have eyes and ears, and
this might be too dangerous for human use, so maybe
(12:12):
we shouldn't use it in hospitals. Lynn and Fink, who
were making Lysol at the time, were like, oh crap,
this is our big market. Here is marketing to these hospitals, right,
And so here's what we'll do. We'll reposition it in
the marketplace and through advertising as something for home use
(12:33):
and for use on women's reproductive organs.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Yes, yes, let's talk about that, because there was essentially
no point in the history of Lyesol that it should
ever have been used on women's reproductive organs. And yet
when they lost that market of selling directly to hospitals
who knew that the field of medicine had its own
journals and that they would start talking amongst themselves. They
(13:01):
essentially created, they re debuted their product as a contraceptive.
And at the time this was not completely off the wall.
Using a vaginal douche as a contraceptive. There's no way
for me to say that and not feel like I'm
talking about a guy, a guy, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
It's really taken over.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, it has that. This was like the main way
that people prevented birth, and it didn't even work very well,
but this was like all they had at the time.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Essentially, yeah, it was contraception. Well, this is sort of
one of the early ironies is you could sell lysol
as a cleaner, you know, those influenza in the early
nineteen hundreds and nineteen teen, so like it was doing
great there, but you could not market it legally as
(13:54):
a contraceptive, not because it was dangerous and didn't work,
but because contraceptives were illegal in the US and Canada
from the late nineteenth century eighteen seventy three with a
Comstock Act here. In the US, birth control eventually was
legalized in nineteen sixty five if you were married, if
you wanted to have sex out of marriage and not
(14:15):
get pregnant, you had to wait until nineteen seventy two
to get that approval, one year after I was born,
which is shocking. So from nineteen nineteen all the way
through the nineteen sixties, they promoted lysol as an illegal
contraceptive under the banner of the mythological term of feminine hygiene.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Right, and so just because they used that term and
never said this is a contraceptive, they instead said it
with like a wink and a nuts like we all
know what we're talking about, right, And consumers did know.
They were well aware that what Lysol was saying is like,
if you use this after sex, it's going to kill
(15:01):
anything inside. Right, So don't even worry about all this stuff.
It's your contraceptive and lysol. Lysol became the number one
contraceptive in the United States from the nineteen thirties through
the nineteen sixties. Chuck lysol. Douching with lysol was what
(15:22):
most people in the United States used as a contraceptive
for thirty years.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Yeah, and by the way, I want to clear up
real quick, when I said the mythological concept of feminine hygiene.
I don't mean people shouldn't wash their body parts, of course, sure,
I'm talking about this idea of feminine hygiene products and
douching and douching as a contraceptive and all that stuff was,
as far as I can tell, a creation, like a
(15:50):
marketing creation.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yeah. What's ironic about it is that because you're using
lysol again as a douche, you're killing off all of
the beneficial bacteria in the vagina to begin with. So
you actually are creating the problems that feminine hygiene products
were supposed to cure. Help. So the market actually created
(16:17):
itself by this, just the introduction of this. It's nuts.
It's terrible. It's essentially taking advantage of insecure mid century
American women through a really harsh marketing campaign that lasted
for decades.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Oh yeah, let's talk about some of that. There's a
historian name Kristen Hall who looked at you, just dozens
and dozens of these lysol advertisements from the day, and
here are just a few examples. And the married woman,
the cleansing antiseptic douche should follow married relations. Lysol is
the right antiseptic for this delicate purpose. The word germ
(16:59):
was sort of a stand in for semen in many
cases they had They had ads that are just so
clearly trying to exploit, like you said, like the idea
that marital life is the only way to go, and
a clean woman in the kitchen is one that will
appeal to her husband for intercourse. Like this one. It
(17:22):
showed a woman literally trapped in an ad, trapped in
a cobweb that said was spun by my husband's indifference
and until she's freed by using Lysol to address careless risks,
then you know, dot dot, she won't get sex from
her husband. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
So what the ad was essentially saying is their husband's like,
I'm not having another kid. I'd rather just go without
sex than have another kid. And the wife is like,
but I want sex, And Liesol's like, let us step in.
You start using Lysol. You tell your husband you're going
to use Lysol, he'll be all over you like white
on rice.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Yeah. Basically, if you're if if you don't use lysow,
you're not going to have sex anymore and be happy
in your marriage exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
So this was like the marketing campaign that Lysol came
up with to get women to use Lysol as a contraceptive,
and it should be noted that at the same time
they were marketing it as a disinfectant for your house, right,
So it would be exactly like buying a jug of
lysol and using it to clean your kitchen and then
(18:28):
using it as a contraceptive the same jug. That was
essentially what was going on for these decades.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Well, yeah, and like you mentioned earlier, not only was dangerous,
as we'll see, but it didn't work. They had these
a study from nineteen thirty three, so this is even
back then they knew, right, and they found basically half
two hundred and fifty of the five hundred and seven
women who used lysol as a contraceptive douche became pregnant.
(18:56):
And in the nineteen thirties there were these two doctors,
Sarah Greenberg and Rachel Lynn Palmer that said Lysol's claims
would be laughable were it not for the tragedy of
the many women who have become pregnant.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
But not just get pregnant. They were also like scarring
their vaginas internally, at the very least inflaming them. Some
women died because if you absorbed some of these things
like qacs and some of the other chemicals I'm sure
probably ethanol as well into your body through the very
(19:29):
porous vaginal tissue. You can die from poisoning from lysol poisoning,
and women were dying at the very least hundreds were
ending up in the hospital from it as well.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Yeah, and if that's not bad enough, because of kresol,
the creasol in the lysol, it was used for illegal
abortions well into the twentieth century.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Right, And so, like you said, from the thirties, they
were it was being criticized by the medical community, yet
it just wasn't reaching out to the public at large yet.
And it wasn't until the sixties that people stopped using
lysol as a contraceptive almost overnight. And what happened the
next day when they stopped using lysol was that the
(20:16):
pill had just been introduced, and as it became legal
and widespread and people started to be like, this actually works,
they stopped using lysol immediately.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yeah, So lysol didn't stop being used as a contravaginal
contraceptive because it was the word spread that it was dangerous,
it didn't work. It stopped because the pill came along exactly,
which is really hard to believe.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Really, I'll tell you something that's not hard to believe,
Chuck is let's take our second break.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Oh another early one. I love it.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
Stop jaw.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
All right, so we're back, Lysol. If you remember from
Act two, I guess the fact that it was not
viable as a means of birth control after the pill
came along, or really before actually, in truth, meant that
it had to change their tune yet again. It gained
(21:32):
some ubiquity, being referenced in a Sylvia Plath poem The
Colossus in the nineteen fifties. It was it was just
a something that seems like it's always been around. There
have been different forms of it over the years. You
know that disinfectant spray has been around since the sixties sixties.
I think they started cleaning toilets with it in the sixties.
(21:52):
Eventually they started having the hand soaps and disinfecting wipes
and stuff like that. But they were like, how do
we sell this stuff in an age where the FTC
basically is endorsing or says that you know your claims
have to be true. You can't be misled, The harm
(22:13):
can't outweigh the benefit and stuff like that, like where
what's the new path forward?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Right? So essentially because of this stuff like disinfectants like
lysol and other brands started just tinkering with their formulas
and looking for things that were as effective or more
effective but less toxic. Like for example, in nineteen fifty two,
they dropped creasol for ortho hydroxy phenol, which is a
(22:42):
quarter as toxic as creol. But I mean, you start
doing that, it's like these little adjustments here or there,
you start making significant gains and lowering toxicity. The thing is,
it still is hazardous to your health, depending on how
you're dis to it and what concentration you're exposed to.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Yeah, for sure. And obviously a time when you heard
a lot more about this kind of thing was during,
like you mentioned earlier, the onset of the pandemic from
COVID nineteen. People were buying a lot more disinfectant I
now you said there was a twelve point three increase
in sales that just dollars wise equates to about four
billion bucks American bucks. Yeah, so it's a lot of money.
(23:27):
So you know, obviously with this stuff being used, like
people were disinfecting everything. The CDC was getting a lot
more calls about people going to the hospital from poisoning
just because it's around more. There were plenty of stories
where people would use disinfectants on like on their food itself,
putting it on their skin. At one point, former President
(23:52):
Trump on Live on the Air pondered whether injecting disinfectants
could cure coronavirus. So there's just a lot out of
overuse of this kind of stuff at the time because
of COVID.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Yeah, and he didn't name check Lysol, he said disinfectants,
But Lysol and other companies that make disinfectants issue press
releases basically immediately saying like, don't ingest disinfectants in any way,
shape or form. They're still toxic. And these companies didn't
say they're still very toxic. But depending on who you ask,
they can be pretty toxic. One of the things that
(24:25):
Lysol did get a boost from though, was remember I
said that their QAC is almost proprietary, the benzolconium securate, Well,
it's just different enough from the other versions of that
that Lysol was able to submit itself its formula to
the CDC for testing on killing COVID, and the CDC
(24:48):
was like, all good, So now COVID could be like recommended.
Lysol is specifically recommended by the CDC for you know,
the pandemic, and that was one of the things that
led to Lysol specifically in this huge boom in sales.
Was a pretty smart little marketing maneuver.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
No, absolutely so a big boon for sales obviously. But
in twenty twenty one, the CDC came out and we're like, hey,
you know, this obsessive disinfecting is maybe getting out of
hand and may have long lasting consequences. And this is
where we, you know, we get to talk about something
that we've talked about on the show before, which I always,
(25:28):
you know, I think is kind of super interesting, which
is the fact that when you disinfect something like that,
you're killing good germs and bad germs. And there is
the hypothesis of the fact that you know, like friendly
microorganisms are good for the body, especially in childhood, to
(25:49):
help you build up a more robust immune system, so
you're not just walking around in a completely sanitized situation
at all times, and then when you encounter something in
the real world, all of a sudden, you're getting sick
more often and maybe even worse.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah, like you said, even worse. And that hygiene hypothesis
is supported by this idea that because these kids are
growing up in overly sanitary conditions in like the industrialized world,
they are more prone by far to autoimmune diseases, which
are diseases that the body is attacking the wrong stuff, proteins, tissues,
(26:27):
things that shouldn't be attacking. So you've got things like
food allergies, type one diabetes, multiple sclerosis, all of them
are much higher prevalents in the West than they are
in less developed countries. I think Kyle found a study
that found that in the West, preschool children can have
(26:48):
up to ten percent of a class can have food allergies,
but in mainland China you're going to find something like
two percent. And that type one diabetes, which is your body,
your immune is attacking your insulin producing pancreas. Sixty two
out of every one hundred thousand kids in Finland, an
industrialized country, has type one diabetes, but six point two,
(27:12):
like a tenth out of every one hundred thousand children
in Mexico have it, and zero point five of every
hundred thousand havebit in Pakistan. So all that goes to
show all these and tons of other studies suggest that
because we're cleaning too much, our kids are developing autoimmune
diseases and we need to expose them to more germs.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yeah. That is a version of what's called the old
friends hypothesis, which is, if you're a young kid in
your early years and your formative years, if you have
regular exposure to harmless microbes, then you're going to be
better off in the long run. And if that's really
limited because you're disinfecting your entire house constantly, you're going
(27:54):
to suffer for it. Because you know, there are arguments.
This guy named Graham Rook is one of the proponents.
Argues that your immune system needs dis exposure to diverse
microbes so your body knows how to recognize the threat
when it sees it.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, and he was saying this, Graham Rook in particularly
is a bacteriologists from University College of London. He's saying
there's specific microbes that the human immune system has co
evolved with and that we're killing them through disinfectant and
that those are the ones that train our immune systems
how to be and that without them that's why we're
(28:30):
getting the autoimmune diseases. And yet again it's like a
riff on the hygiene hypothsis. It almost takes it and
like makes it more specific.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
I think, yeah, they've done some more research. Speaking of Finland,
they took stool samples. They took little poopy pellets from
kids in Finland, Estonia, and Russia and found that in
the in Finland, which is you know, super industrialized at
this point. In Estonia, they did not have Escherishia.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
I don't know e coli. I know that's what most
people call it.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
I'll just call it ecoliles trying to be fancy that
activates a response from the immune system, but had a
bacteria bacteriotis species that inhibits the immune system. So not
only did it not have what you needed to activate
the immune response, you had something that inhibits it.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Right, So again there's a lot of research to support
this kind of stuff that we are overcleaning, and in
particular in the United States, we have a particular obsession
with cleanliness and we overdo it essentially. And again, just
like with Lysol's advertising blitz in the twenties and thirties
(29:44):
that got women to use lysol as a contraceptive based
on their insecurities. We're marketed to like, there's germs everywhere,
your kid's going to get sick, your kid is sneezing
on things. They've got to clean the entire house, and
not just clean, but disinfect And it seems to be
if the hygiene hypothesis and old Friend's hypothesis are correct.
(30:06):
It's the disinfecting part that's the problem. That if we
just cleaned, you know, and kept things tidy, we would
those good microbes would be around, and we are exposed
to them. We don't have to worry as much about
the other microbes that are harmful because our immune systems
are primed to take care of those things a little more.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
That's right, And I know I mentioned it before. It
is one percent anecdotal. I'm not disputing that. But we
have never been big overly disinfectant as a household. We
have let my daughter be dirty and stay dirty, and
she's one of the healthiest kids I've ever known in
(30:49):
my life. Again, purely anecdotal, but who knows. I think
maybe we're just lazy, but it feels like it feels
like we've done right by her. Because she just not
get sick much.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
That's awesome, man. Yeah, yeah, that hygiene hypothesis. I just
love it. It's so intuitive, it's so like folksy and homey.
I just love it. So I hope it's correct. I
hope it doesn't ever get overturned.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Yeah, I mean, what do we do When we were kids,
We rolled around in the dirt. Our parents weren't bothered
to care or you know, maybe we've got to wash
your hands before dinner kind of thing, but maybe not even.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Yeah, no, for sure. And I mean the generation after us,
where we started cleaning more and more with disinfectants, that's
when autoimmune diseases really starting to pick up. It's just
the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming, essentially. Yeah, there's some other
stuff too. Like I said, some people are like, yeah,
this stuff is still toxic, so be careful with it.
(31:49):
Some people are saying, like, Okay, it depends on the
concentration that you're exposed to. Lifsol that's super concentrated that
you're supposed to dilute. That is very dangerous stuff. There's
endocrine disruptors in there, there's anti freeze in there. You
can breathe it in you can absorb it through your skin.
Just undiluted lysol or concentrated lysol is dangerous. But what's
(32:13):
called ready to use, the stuff you buy in the
bottle that you just start spraying that is so diluted
that it's more toxic effects are well, they're diluted essentially.
So some people say it's not really a problem to
use lysol. Other people are like, it depends on the context.
(32:34):
If you spray lysol air spray in a closed room,
you don't want to be in there to breathe it
in because it's going to mess your lungs up pretty good.
Other people are like, like, we know that these this
exposure to lysol right then is not harmful, but there's
not enough studies on what's called chronic low level exposure.
(32:57):
But just using it over and over and over again
for years, what does that do to the body, And
so we need to study that kind of stuff more. Unfortunately,
there are people in the government who are working against
that kind of stuff and introducing bills that are like,
not only do we not want to combat this, we
(33:18):
want to make disinfectant manufacturers, we want to make it
easier for them to just cover up what they're using
as ingredients so people can't study them.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Yeah, what was that? I saw it sort of. I
mean it seemed like it was directly influenced from the
lobby from these companies. But who was it that introduced
that bill that basically said, like, hey, you know what,
you shouldn't have to say what ingredients are in your product.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah, Indiana Representative congress Person Larry Bouchon introduced a bill
in October twenty twenty three. Still doesn't have a name. Weirdly,
it doesn't even have a number, so I guess it's
not gotten very far so far. But what it represents
is a real disruption in the disinfected industry because California
(34:06):
passed a law that was really hardcore about telling everybody
what's in your products as disinfectants, And there was a
big kind of stakeholder back and forth between dis infectant
manufacturers and the government of California to kind of come
to this consensus like, Okay, we'll abide by California's law
(34:27):
essentially everywhere in the United States, but the rest of
the states have to promise that they're not going to
make any laws. There are even tougher than California. We're
all going to agree that this California law is a compromise,
and so this federal bill preempts the California law, so
it undoes all that negotiation. So some companies, including the
(34:48):
makers of Lifesol, are like, yes, let's support that bill.
But other companies like Clorox have come forward and they're like,
we're opposed to this bill. We already went through this
whole process, we came to a compromise, and this conceivably
open up the case for states later on to come
up with even worse bills or stricter bills than the
California one. So it's a big deal actually in the
(35:10):
disinfected industry right now, and it's kind of up in
the air which way it'll go.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
Oh, I'm sure. Another thing that's a potential future well
in the future is kind of now because already being used.
But germicidal ultraviolet light GUV is something a lot of
people are fairly hot on UV rays and things like
that we know can be or UV light can be dangerous.
That's why we use sunblock and stuff like that. But
(35:38):
this is a different kind of UV. This is called
far UV. They are applied in very specifically short wavelengths,
so it's not penetrating like regular UV. And I even
bought one of those little UV cases that you put
your cell phone in during the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah, I got it too.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
Yeah, I think I used it twice, oh really, and
recently donated it. It just never caught on in my house.
But you know, you gotta be careful with these things
because they you could buy like a UV wand to
just wave over your doorknob at home, but it may
not be far UV. And a lot of the FDA
is like, hey, be careful with these things that you're
(36:19):
buying because UV light can be super dangerous as.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Well, Yeah, to your skin, to your eyes essentially, you know,
over long term exposure. Who knows, cancer probably, But this
this far UV, because the wave links are so small,
They're like, this can't penetrate skin or the cornea essentially,
So it's it will kill all the germs, all the
bacteria in the air. That's the other benefit of it too, Chuck.
(36:47):
It's like if you and I are talking and one
of us has COVID and I cough in a room
that has a correct setup for far UV, GUV, germicidal
UV like you said, it'll kill that stuff before you
can breathe it in.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
So it has a really great benefit and application, but
it can also still be dangerous because what they figured
out is that even far UV creates ozone, and ozone
can interact with other particles in the air, creating air
pollution essentially inside your house. Yeah, and that's not good.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
That's not good at all.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
So they're grappling with it.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Emily, when she had her business use and we still
use this at home. Sometimes she would just make her
own She called the alcohol and orange. It was just
alcohol with orange essential oil to help it smell good, right,
And would just use that on the tables and stuff
when she had stainless steel tables when she was manufacturing stuff.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Yeah, and I'm sure she added water too, but I
did not realize this until researching this. Alcohol by itself
is not as effective in killing viruses or destroying viruses
as alcohol and water is. It does something to enhance
the action of the alcohol. Isn't that fascinating?
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Yeah? And remember during COVID, we did some episodes sort
of around that that where we were like, you know,
washing our hands with soap is more effective than using
the alcohol based hand sanitizer.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Yeah, because it binds to it and washes it off. Right,
that's right, that is something I need to get over.
It's very clear to me I developed a real severe
case of germophobia during COVID. Really it's gotten much better,
much better, but it's still present. Like I'll grab a
paper towel and use that to pump gas with and
(38:42):
then use alcohol on my hands afterward, and like there's
just stuff I should not be doing. And researching this
made me realize, like I need to mellow out.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Yeah, yeah, well that's good. But I don't use hand
sanitizer and never really have, but I do. We'll use
the paper towel if they have them at the gas station,
because I don't want grubby gas smell on me why.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
I'm doing it, And I will grab one on my.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Way out of a like especially like an airport bathroom,
I'll grab a paper towel or the paper towel that
I've used to dry my hands. I might use that
on the door handle, because that's I think that's why
they keep that trash can right by the door as well, right.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Yeah, exactly, yes, if they're like that, not if there's
not paper towels. And you ever open the bathroom door
in a public restroom and I suddenly pop out around you,
it's because I've been standing there waiting for somebody to
open the door because I won't let myself touch the
door handle. I just can't. I can't do it. Or
if I'm the guy who like holds the door for
you with this foot and it's like, oh sorry, runs off.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
That's okay. I think a lot of people do stuff
like that. That's just you know, especially like in airport's
you know, people are traveling all over their place. I
don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
No, but yeah, I just need to be less delicate.
I think. I think it would be better for me
psychologically and health wise too.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
Yeah. Maybe get to some of that worry out of
the old brain.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Exactly exactly what's the worst is gonna happen? I could
die of norovirus?
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Who writ Oh man, I'd have to find a new
co host.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Don't do that, Like I said, who cares, Chuck? You
got anything else?
Speaker 3 (40:23):
M okay?
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Well that's it for Lisol everybody. Thanks again to holland
thanks again for Kyle for helping us out with this
and since I just named check Kyle again, it's time
for listener mail.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
I'm going to call this just a very kind thank you. Hey, guys,
want to say thanks for doing what you do. Your humor, intellect,
and open mindedness have been an inspiration for me for
many years. I started listening back in nine when I
was traveling back and forth between Gainesville and Tallahassee, Florida
to visit my college girlfriend. When I graduated, I continued
listening through med school, when driving two rotations, visiting my
(40:59):
mail school girlfriend, and anytime I could find a break
during the monotony of studying. Still listen regularly during my
residency and obstetrics and gynecology, especially when driving the satellite
hospitals I worked at, and of course flying back to
Florida to visit my residency girlfriend. Things are progressing, you
(41:20):
notice this? Yeah? For both?
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Is it the same girlfriend? Do you think?
Speaker 3 (41:24):
Yeah? I mean things are progressing romantically and professionally for
this couple. Gotcha, it's a great story. I finished residency
in twenty eighteen. Still listen almost every day when I'm
driving to the hospital or my office where I work
as an obgyn. Married that residency girlfriend nice, and we
have three beautiful kids who are in med school. No
just kidding, twin boys and our seven month old baby girl.
(41:49):
Listen to all the episodes at once. Listen to the
End of the World with Josh Clark. Thanks, yeehaw. Many
episodes of movie Crush, yeehaw. Lots of Don't Be Dumbs? Okay,
what's wrong with Don't Be Dumbs? No, Don't Be Dumbs
are great. I just anytime someone has dived into the videos,
I think it's pretty like extra.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
They're hardcore for sure.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
Yeah, I wasn't saying it was something. In fact, Don't
Be was the best of what happened in our video
were your Don't be Dumbs?
Speaker 2 (42:19):
I don't know, man, what about our this day in
history weirdness?
Speaker 3 (42:26):
I always felt like we were just hanging on by
the skin of our teeth. We definitely were. Anyway, watch
Don't Be Dumb. If you haven't, everyone, it's pretty great.
I haven't dug up the TV show yet, but maybe
one day I will. One day I will. I have
your book, but sadly not your board game. Not to
go parasocial on you, guys, but I really like you.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
We like you too.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
Your constant motivation to continue to be better in all
aspects of your lives, and your openness therein has been
an inspiration. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you,
and that is from Adam.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Thanks a lot, Adam, that was a great email. Appreciate that.
Congratulations on becoming a doctor. Bless you for that. Bless
your wife too, Bless your kids as well for having
doctor parents.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
Bless everybody med school.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
Girlfriend. I think is a great name for an indie
pop band.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
Totally yeah, nailed it.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
So thanks for that too, Adam. If you want to
be like Adam and send us a really nice email,
we are always happy to receive those. You can wrap
it up, spank it on the bottom like a obg
y n, and send it off to Stuff podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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