May/June 2026

What do Jeremy Grantham, Shanna Swan, and Bryan Johnson have in Common?

Three successful people who believe that chemical toxicity is one of the most important issues of our time and that it is not getting enough attention.

Jeremy Grantham is a famous investor who started one of the early index funds and then went on to build an investment firm that currently manages over $75 billion. His focus has expanded from market cycles and valuation discipline to long-horizon systemic risks, especially climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, and chemical toxicity. Grantham argues that the global fertility decline is made worse by endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as PFAS, phthalates, bisphenols, and pesticides. He describes chemical exposure as a neglected factor of falling fertility, alongside other complex social, cultural and economic factors. He warns that widespread chemical exposure is damaging reproductive health, lowering sperm counts, and threatening future birth rates. A sharply falling population can have unpredictable and severe economic and social consequences, which makes the fertility and toxicity crisis one of the challenges of our time.

Dr. Shanna Swan was recently on Joe Rogan’s podcast for the second time. She is an environmental epidemiologist who has transformed public understanding of how hazardous chemicals affect human health, particularly reproductive and developmental health. Through decades of research at institutions including Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and University of Rochester, Swan documented declines in sperm count and linked prenatal exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as phthalates, BPA to fertility problems, altered reproductive development, and broader hormonal disruption. Her work demonstrates that everyday chemical exposures can have lifelong and even generational consequences. Her book Count Down and recent Netflix movie The Plastic Detox urges policymakers, industry leaders, and consumers to recognize the urgent need to reduce exposure to hazardous chemicals in plastics, personal care products, food packaging, and household goods. She has helped catalyze stronger public awareness and support for safer chemical policies worldwide through her public speaking and frequent interviews.

Bryan Johnson is a successful technology entrepreneur who founded Braintree in 2007, which was acquired by PayPal for $800 million in 2013. He went on to start the “Don’t Die” movement and to become a social media influencer, publicly tracking his biomarkers, exercise, nutrition, sauna, supplements and sleep regime, and promoting extreme self-optimization for the purpose of extending his healthy life span. In his many social media posts, he argues that everyday exposure to hazardous chemicals and pollutants—especially microplastics, PFAS, heavy metals, pesticides, VOCs, pharmaceutical residues, gas-stove emissions, and toxic cleaning-product byproducts—is an underappreciated driver of biological stress and premature aging. For example, his recent guidance explicitly frames the home as an environment that can aggravate aging and recommends interventions such as reverse-osmosis water filtration, reducing plastics, avoiding nonstick PFAS cookware, minimizing gas-stove use, and switching to less toxic cleaning products.

Grantham, Swan, and Johnson, have taken different paths to understanding and promoting awareness of harmful chemicals. Beyond encouraging people to avoid unnecessary exposure to plastics, PFAS, pesticides, and other harmful chemicals, they represent very different world views and approaches to solving the toxics problem. Detoxifying our chemicals, products, and food system is a massive undertaking and will take regulatory changes, market changes, social changes, and investment in innovation. It is heartening to see leadership coming from different places. 

RFK / MAHA Check-in

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. began his career as an environmental lawyer known for litigation against polluters. He shifted from mainstream environmental law into broader public-health activism, becoming a controversial figure for vaccine skepticism. After being a lifelong Democrat and running for president on that side in 2024, he joined the Trump campaign and is now serving as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the current administration.

Under the “Make America Healthy Again” or “MAHA” slogan RFK has raised, during his campaign and after, the profile of the argument that chronic disease, especially in children, is being driven not only by diet and lifestyle but also by cumulative exposure to environmental toxins, food additives, pesticides, plastics, PFAS, and other hazardous chemicals. HHS’s 2025 MAHA report identified the accumulation of environmental toxins as a key root-cause of chronic disease.

Since taking over HHS, Kennedy has put forward two initiatives related to food chemicals. First, he announced a plan to phase out eight petroleum-based synthetic food dyes by the end of 2026. The FDA only revoked authorization for two rarely used ones (Citrus Red No. 2 and Orange B), while the elimination of the six widely used ones (like Red 40, Yellow 5, and Blue 1) relies on voluntary cooperation from food companies, not a binding ban. Second, he directed the FDA to explore rulemaking to eliminate the self-affirmed GRAS pathway that lets companies certify their own ingredients as safe without FDA review. That effort is still in the exploratory stage with no actual rulemaking yet.

That’s where RFK’s initiatives related to toxic chemicals seem to stop. No action was taken yet on pesticides and microplastics in spite of campaign promises. At the same time, personnel changes, grant cancellations, and proposed budget cuts at the CDC, NIH, and other parts of HHS significantly hurt HHS's environmental health science capacity.

Looking at the bigger picture of the Trump administration, the EPA recently announced plans to weaken drinking water regulations regarding several PFAS chemicals, reversed previous bans, approved or relaxed the regulatory regime of several pesticides (Atrazine, Dicamba, and Isocycloseram), and removed limits on Ethylene Oxide. Elsewhere, USDA was instructed to expand production of Glyphosate under the Defense Production Act.

While good to have high-level leadership raising the issue of toxic chemicals and chronic disease, there has been very little positive action. Did RFK sell out? We think it is more likely that he is ineffective and isolated within the Trump administration, and maybe even used for cover. Will this RFK adventure in the Trump administration end up causing more harm than help to the issue of toxic chemicals? Time will tell.

In the meantime, environmental health leaders should take advantage of bipartisan and public support for detoxification. 

What is Holding Safer Chemistry Back?

Significant progress has been made on the issue of toxic chemicals since the 1970s. Many of the worst offenders—lead, mercury, PCBs—have been regulated and largely addressed. But are we at the end of this road, halfway through, or still near the beginning?

The evidence suggests we have a long way to go. Toxic chemicals persist in consumer products, food, manufacturing processes, and agriculture. We find them in blood, tissues, soils, waterways, and oceans whenever we look. Sperm counts are declining. Rates of autism, cancer, and metabolic and other chronic diseases are rising. Some of these connections are now reasonably well established: endocrine disruptors like BPA and phthalates are linked to fertility problems and metabolic disease; PFAS are linked to cancer; perchloroethylene (PERC) is linked to chronic neurological conditions.

So why isn’t there a more urgent reaction from regulators, the public, and the private sector? We think several arguments—some reasonable, some self-serving—help explain the inertia, in addition to just regular inertia.

Argument 1: The Significant Toxic Chemicals Have Already Been Addressed

Some believe that the truly harmful chemicals—lead, asbestos, benzene—have already been regulated, and that those still in use pose no real danger. In this view, remaining concerns are either exaggerated by alarmists or involve substances that cannot reach humans or wildlife in doses high enough to cause harm.

This perspective reflects an assumption that we have an effective approach to chemicals regulation. People find it hard to believe that chemicals with serious toxicity would be allowed. They are probably right when it comes to acute toxicity—a substance that causes immediate, obvious harm is unlikely to escape regulation. But chronic toxicity—the harm from repeated low-level exposure, including in-utero exposure—is harder to detect, prove, and regulate.

Argument 2: We Don’t Have Enough Data

The second argument holds that while some chemicals may cause harm in laboratory settings, we lack sufficient data to demonstrate with certainty that they are harming the public. Until we obtain rigorous proof of the specific harm and its pathway, we cannot act meaningfully.

This is the argument most often employed by the companies that manufacture these chemicals, and it underpins the risk framework— as opposed to the precautionary approach, which focuses on chemicals’ inherent hazard. The distinction between “hazard” and “risk” may seem academic, but it explains why many chemicals remain relatively unregulated despite being known to be hazardous. Hazard is the inherent potential to cause harm. To establish risk, on top of hazard, one must demonstrate sufficient exposure to the chemicals and bioavailability of the chemicals such that there is a sufficient dose to be linked to disease for a large segment of the population.

A risk framework requires significantly more data, and struggles to account for differences in individual susceptibility, multiple overlapping exposures, and the misuse or overuse of various chemicals and products. Requiring proof of hazard, exposure, and significant population harm often means that some hazardous chemistry will go unregulated.

The current regulatory environment disincentivizes companies from conducting additional toxicity and exposure studies because they may be held liable for what they discover. Proving chronic harm at the population level is beyond the reach of individual scientists or one-off research efforts. It requires sustained government action.

The alternative would be a shift towards the precautionary approach, that relies on chemical structure, properties, and lab-scale measurement of hazards as the basis for chemical restriction.

We need to create an effective approach to ensuring chemical safety while still allowing innovation to thrive. The approach needs to hold both new and existing chemicals to the same standards and have data requirements sufficient to support regulatory decisions without being so expensive and time-consuming as to discourage bringing new chemicals to market. We recognize this is a tricky balance.

Argument 3: Social Utility Outweighs the Harm

Even with good data on toxicity, some argue that we must weigh the harm against a chemical’s social utility—and that in some cases, utility wins. This is the logic behind claims that DDT’s role in controlling malaria outweighed its environmental destruction, that the toxicity of modern agricultural chemicals is justified because that’s how we feed the world, or that plastic pollution is an acceptable price for affordable fresh food.

We recognize that when the conversation reaches this point, there is at least a common foundation for debate about regulation, innovation, and safer alternatives. The more troubling question is: what happens when we have the data, there is public consensus that the harm is real, and still nothing changes?

Argument 4: Not Enough People Care Deeply Enough

Even when the harm is documented and exceeds any plausible social utility, few seem to care enough—except for a small community of foundations, NGOs, scientists, and advocates. The issue of toxic chemicals seems to always sit at the margins of public awareness.

This is puzzling. The wellness, fitness, beauty, pharmaceutical, and healthcare industries are enormous economic sectors, all premised on the desire to live healthier and longer. People clearly care about their health and are willing to spend time, effort, and money on it. Why, then, doesn’t that concern extend more thoroughly to toxic chemical exposure? Several factors may be at play:

1. Complexity. Understanding chemicals and toxicity is daunting. Chemistry is already difficult; chemistry combined with toxicology even more so.

2. Entangled causation. Health effects from toxic chemical exposure are almost always intertwined with genetics, lifestyle, and other environmental factors in ways that cannot be easily disentangled. When impacts cannot be cleanly attributed to a single cause, the resulting uncertainty makes it harder to argue for immediate action.

3. The logic of small increments. Some people may rationalize that small exposures here and there won’t meaningfully change their lives—the same way an extra cigarette, candy bar, or drink feels inconsequential in isolation.

4. Status quo bias. It is hard to perceive the world we have always known as not normal. If toxic chemicals have always been present, their presence feels like the baseline rather than a problem.

Even the segment of the public that does care about toxicity can only seem to focus on one or two issues at a time. The current conversation centers mostly on PFAS and microplastics. Some of the plasticizers, pesticides, preservatives, solvents, antimicrobials, antioxidants, fire retardants, and hazardous dyes do receive some attention—but not at the intensity or level to compel immediate action from the government or industry.

What Is to Be Done?

Can we afford to wait for the science to settle every open question? We do not want to ban useful chemicals on mere speculation. For those of us who have reached a sufficient level of conviction, the time for action is now—as consumers, investors, scientists, and advocates. We must raise the profile of this issue. We must act with our wallets, votes, grant money, donor-advised funds, and investment capital to drive toxic chemicals out of the material economy. The question is not whether we can afford to act. It is whether we can afford not to.

Financings

Agriodor, a company that develops compounds to control crop pests without chemical pesticides, raised $17.7 million.

AuX Labs, producer of dairy proteins like casein using fermentation to make animal-free cheese, raised $4 million.

Clean Food Group, producer sustainable oils and fats by fermenting yeast using waste feedstocks, raised $6.1 million.

Crew Carbon, a company using alkaline minerals to improve wastewater treatment efficiency and remove carbon dioxide, raised $25 million.

DISA Technologies, developer of High-Pressure Slurry Ablation (HPSA) technology for mineral processing, resource recovery, and domestic uranium remediation, raised $33 million.

Gradiant, provider of industrial water treatment for data centers, semiconductor manufacturers, and other industrial customers, raised an undisclosed amount for its Series E round at a $2 billion valuation.

Magrathea, a company extracting magnesium metal from seawater and industrial brines using electrochemical processes, raised $24 million.

Melazyme, provider of biomolecules through precision fermentation for applications including sunscreens, sweeteners, pigments, and industrial materials, raised $2 million.

NanoTech Materials, developer of coatings that reduce heat transfer and improve fire resistance in buildings, raised $29.4 million.

Renewable Metals, a company recovering critical minerals, including lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper, from lithium-ion battery waste using an alkali-based hydrometallurgical process, raised $12 million. 

Resurrect Bio, a company using protein interaction modeling to identify gene edits that help crops restore natural resistance to pathogens and pests, raised $10.3 million.

Scentian Bio, developer of biosensors that detect chemical compounds to identify food quality issues, raised $4.1 million.

Sepion Technologies, developer of polymer coatings for battery separators that improve energy density, charging performance, and, raised $10 million.

Sora Fuel, a company capturing CO₂ from the air and converting it into sustainable aviation fuel, raised $14.6 million.

Standing Ovation, producer casein proteins via precision fermentation for use in dairy and food products, raised $28.8 million.

Sugarox, maker of crop bio-stimulants based on plant sugar signaling molecules, raised $3.4 million.

Trillium Renewable Chemicals, maker of bio-based acrylonitrile and other chemical intermediates, raised $13 million.

Also Noted

• Lone Star Tick and Alpha Gal spreading in the Northeast – Get Mimikai and write a review!

• California Air Resources board taking action on two carcinogens, acrolein and ethylene oxide.

• EU rolling out textile recycling laws.

• Bad for frogs, bad for you, atrazine reapproved.

• Finally, a new sunscreen ingredient!

• Pesticide problem in Berry Town.

• Fake butter flavor, still a bad idea.

• Tell Home Depot to ban PVC.

• Cookware giants suing Caraway over PFAS-free claims.

• Methyl methacrylate leak at an aerospace company in California forces evacuation of 10,000s.