SciShow Tangents - Hygiene

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

Visit HENSONSHAVING.com/TANGENTS to pick the razor for you and use code TANGENTS and you’ll get two years' worth of blades free! A big part of being a human is that you get progressively more gross as the day goes on. Various parts start stinking, hair grows all over your face, you're touching who-knows-what... luckily for all of us, someone a long time ago decided to invent hygiene! Otherwise we'd have to lick ourselves like cats!SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! Head to www.patreon.com/SciShowTangents to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter! A big thank you to Patreon subscribers Garth Riley and Glenn Trewitt for helping to make the show possible!And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @im_sam_schultz Hank: @hankgreen[Definition] History of hygiene https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2542893/ [Trivia Question] Pelagic thresher sharks visit blue-streaked cleaner wrasse stations https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0014755 https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/sharks-rays-and-climate-change-impacts-habitat-prey-distribution-and-health [Fact Off] Bronze Age ivory lice comb with Canaanite language https://jjar.huji.ac.il/sites/default/files/jjar/files/jjar2_art4_lachish_p76-119_2022-10-12_01.pdf https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/4000-year-old-head-lice-comb-found-inscribed-with-phrase-using-the-alphabet https://www.sciencenews.org/article/canaanite-comb-lice-israel-alphabet Tampon Task Force & menstrual hygiene https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5436965/ https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/article/view/28788/_9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYXUQDzSg4o&feature=youtu.be https://srh.bmj.com/content/early/2023/07/03/bmjsrh-2023-201895 https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/997629 [Ask the Science Couch] Antiperspirant aluminum compounds - how they work & are they harmful https://cen.acs.org/articles/90/i27/Deodorants-Antiperspirants.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3813027/ https://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/features/antiperspirant-facts-safety https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-advertisers-convinced-americans-they-smelled-bad-12552404/ [Butt One More Thing] Mandrills teach their children hygienic behaviors to avoid peri-anal parasites https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2022.2349 https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/979546

SciShow Tangents is brought to you by Henson's Shaving, which is a family-owned aerospace parts manufacturer that's bringing precision engineering to your shaving experience. Visit hensonshaving.com slash tangents to pick the razor for you and use the code tangents and you'll get two years worth of blades free. Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive science knowledge showcase. I'm your host, Hank Green. Joining me this week, as always, is science expert, Sari Reilly. Hello. And our resident everyman sam schultz i'm back baby he's back baby all right you two what's your teen name what does that mean sari just tell me and the people will figure it out don't explain this to them okay don't explain it don't explain it everyone's favorite thing an inside joke that no one knows. Yeah. My teen name is Mountain Dew Grape Fanta. Mountain Dew Grape Fanta is a surprise to me because of how grape Fanta is so gross.

It's so delicious is the thing about it. And all cool teens know that grape Fanta is the hidden gem of sodas. Oh, yeah. And all cool teens know that Mountain Dew is is the hidden gem of sodas. Yeah, and all cool teens know that Mountain Dew is bad. I don't know, actually. Maybe these days they don't like Mountain Dew. Maybe Mountain Dew is a Gen X treat. Well, I guess the other thing is I was a very uncool teen, so maybe that's even more appropriate for my teen name

to be so counterculture and just oblivious to it because I'm in my own little bubble. Samuel Schultz. Okay, my teen name is Squirt Lime Coke. That's a little raunchy though. You can't say that on a science podcast. Nice to meet you. That's one of those nicknames for children

that sounds quite innocent, but actually isn't. Well, when it was invented, yes. When it was invented, it was fine. Since then, the internet's existed and, you know. I used to be Dr. Pepper Pomplamoose LaCroix, of course. I think I've come around on Dr. Pepper and I might be more just like straight diet Pepsi pomplamoose LaCroix. Diet is almost cheating because diet anything is disgusting.

But I don't think you're right, Sam. I think a lot of people really love diet Pepsi and especially diet Coke. I know people who drink so much diet Coke. That's true. I think maybe more people like diet Pepsi than real Pepsi. Who likes real Pepsi? Show of hands. Sorry to Pepsi. Do you really? Yeah, they're real.

I think Pepsi tastes better than Coke. So if you're at a restaurant and somebody says, we don't have Coke, Pepsi's okay, you go, absolutely, I love Pepsi. Even better. And then they kick you out of the restaurant. I'm thrilled. This is a social experiment you're not supposed to say yes sari you have you have said so many things that have shocked me just about you're sort of like you're like the way that you perceive the universe differently

from me my perception of beverages i prefer pepsi is really throwing me for a loop every week here on size your tangents we get together to try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other with science facts and also teen names, which we still didn't explain to you. And I guess we're just not going to. I don't even know if you can watch the thing that explains what it is anymore. I don't know if you can. There's probably clips. I bet there's clips.

Just search teen names. Our panelists are playing for Glory, but also for Hank Bucks, which I'll be awarding as we play. And at the end of the episode, one of you people will be crowned the winner. Now, as always, we're going to introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from Sari. A central quest of being human is to somehow delay death. And today that has turned into an avoidance of bad breath. Is there something more innate that's going on behind the scenes or does culture dominate all of our rise and shine routines? It seems that the root of hygiene is fighting off disease by wiping

up or washing hands off after you have sneezed. There is something biological, behavioral in genes. Ants and cats and birds and apes all take the time to preen. But then there are subjective things like shaving off your hair. Is it for bugs or social pressures that shape what we bear? Mammals cleanse their fur of dirt or grime that leaves a sheen. But how much soap or elbow grease even counts as clean? So when it comes to hair or skin or teeth and caring for you best, a part of it is science, but then we make up the rest.

We just make up the rest. The topic of the day is hygiene, which what you're saying is I probably do more than I need to, is what I'm hearing, and I'm going to take that to heart. It does seem like you can look around at all the rest of the animal kingdom

and be like, we're doing something wrong. Because they aren't doing any of the stuff we're doing. And they don't stink too bad. I smell my cat every day. She smells great. Yeah, but cats do wash a lot. But just in their own way. I wouldn't want to do it the way the cats do just by licking myself.

I wouldn't want to do it the way the cats do by just by licking myself. But also, just so you know, animals experience a great deal of negative consequences from not having hygiene. Okay. Okay. I often hear this is like, why don't dogs have to brush their teeth? And it's like, well, eventually they get dental disease and it's very bad and they die. Okay. Especially in the wild.

Well, you can see, you can like open up your little dog or cat mouth and you can see them they're kind of gooey and got stink mouse for sure definitely you do got to brush their teeth at some point if you like want them to maintain like i have never brushed my cat's teeth i guess i haven't brushed a cat tooth i've used to brush my dog's teeth yes i wouldn't i'm scared to go in there with the cat teeth. Pointy and small. Yeah, I was recently told that it was kind of cool for my cat. Like cats biting

is just like part of, you know, fun and play. And so I should just let her let him do it. Oh, like, no. Who told you that? Did a cat tell you that?

I don't remember. Did your cat tell you that? It was just cats on a podcast. Yeah. Pretending to be people. Probably what it was. It was just cats on a podcast. Pretending to be people. Probably what it was. It's fun. Just play.

Has anybody ever actually seen the McElroy brothers? Because I think they're just three cats. Hygiene, though. Sarah, what's hygiene? I couldn't think of a segue, so that works great. Yeah, I think't think of a segue. So that works great. Yeah, I think there is a lot of misconceptions around hygiene, but there are also a lot of unknowns about hygiene,

which makes room for those misconceptions. Colloquially, it's any sort of like cleanliness around yourself or your surroundings. And so that can mean like microbiologically fending off germs or disease in various ways, washing hands or cleansing yourself of dirt or grime that could become breeding grounds for bacteria or other things. Medically or societally, it can mean sterilization of equipment or like water or sanitation systems, waste disposal systems. But then I think a lot of times when people talk about hygiene, they're talking about like morning routine stuff. So do you bathe or do you like wipe your butt when you poop? Or are you

modifying your keratin in some way? Are you like cutting your hair or trimming your nails are you brushing or flossing your teeth and then and like those in general have a relation to medicine in general taking care of yourself in those ways can reduce the chance of abrasions or infections or or whatnot but then also layered on top of that are like societal or cultural pressures for hygiene and what is hygienic in one society can vary or not like some cultures encourage beard growth and maintenance in some ways some cultures are like clean shaven is more hygienic yeah um different smells are considered more or less hygienic uh deodorant is a fairly recent invention and push to society and covering it up with perfume or other like artificial or concocted scents as opposed to like having natural body odor. And oh, and I guess to like the argument that hygiene,, we don't have to do it.

We've been doing hygiene for a long time. I tried to look back at human history. And what's tricky is that you can't necessarily fossilize hygiene. You can't tell how someone smelled based on their bones. Those aren't stinky Hank bones. Those are fresh Hank bones. But we have evidence through artifacts

so like combs or stones that we think were used as abrasives to remove hair or old versions of razors or art and texts of people describing things. jazari who is my favorite mesopotamian like roboticist he made all kinds of this whole book of mechanical devices with

these elaborate illustrations is he the only mesopotamian roboticist no probably not okay probably not but he's the famous guy I mean there's a bunch now yeah that's true but in older-y times people living in that part of the world working with robots he did it a couple thousand years ago and he designed an automaton

for ritual hand washing like peacock spout or things like that so interesting in the bible they're they're always anointing people with oils putting and they're washing each other's feet the hand washing thing is like robot is interesting to me i guess because i know about like the doctors who are like hey you don't gotta wash your hands, don't worry about it. Is that just like something that we had gone back and forth on? Or were they washing their hands because they were sticky? Then germs were another thing that we didn't think about yet.

I guess your hands have always been getting stickier and honey all the time, probably. And have mesothetamines. Yeah, probably. Little figs. I think we went back and forth on it. I think a lot of earlier hand washing from what i have gathered was more intuition based so like something disgusting happened and i must cleanse myself my hands or yeah yeah i'm stinky i gotta fix that or

there was a lot of association with um like you can't use unwashed hands to pray at an altar in various religions or a lot of like religious significance or spiritual significance. There was a lot of like you must wash before you interact with a sacred object. And that was probably because when people didn't wash their hands, they got sick. Yeah. And so then there was some correlation between unwashed hands and the devil yeah sure but then i think to cross over from religious intuition or personal intuition into scientific practice there was a level of doubt of like well why are you why are you making this do that makes sense so and I assume that the word hygiene comes from just the guy named Gene. And we just like say hi to him.

He's the guy who washed your feet. Hi, Gene. While we do our teeth. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. He's the foot guy. He did your feet. He did your hands.

It was from a guy. He did your feet and hands. It's from the Greek word hygiene, which is the healthful art from hyges which is healthy or sound or hearty or living well um who is and all these like concepts were personified as the goddess hygieia so there was there was a guy lady there was a lady a lady guy um so i could go back in time to ancient greece and say hygiene and and be like, you're from here. Welcome. Welcome home.

You're like, she's that way. Watch your hands before, before going. And they just be following you around being like, you want us to wash your feet? I don't know why we do that, but we do that a lot.

Not again. Thanks. They're pruned up. Anyway, uh, let's make more podcast by playing this week's game. Are you ready to do it? Yeah.

Yes. Humans are always finding new and interesting ways to approach our grooming. And going through history shows us all sorts of examples of our hygienic ingenuity. So today we're going to be going back in time to revisit some of those developments with a game of the scientific definition. back in time to revisit some of those developments with a game of the scientific definition i'm going to name some kind of item to you and you're going to have to both describe to me what you think that item is and whoever comes closest to the actual answer as judged by me wins word number one phrase number one thing number one is the mustache spoon i feel like I'm at a disadvantage having never had a mustache. I don't know if Sam has ever had a mustache. Sam's never had a mustache?

Well, okay. You don't know me. You never know me, my whole life. But that is true, sadly. I tried to grow a mustache at the beginning of the pandemic, much like many people did. Didn't work out. That was a safe time to try to grow a mustache

because nobody was seeing you. You had a mask on all the time. Nobody was seeing you. It's great. But I cannot. Confirmed. Cannot. I tried for months.

Didn't work. Anyway. So my facial hair is finally growing back after chemo. And I swear that I have way more facial hair than I did before treatment. And I'm like, should I try and grow it out and see if i have facial hair now i think you should grow a mustache for sure the mustache spoon maybe it's not even have to do anything with the mustache but it probably does i bet it gets boogers out of your mustache because i bet you get i don't know maybe you get boogers in a mustache i would be worried about that okay a mustache spoon i think it is i like this is a real stretch of my empathy i can't imagine what it's like to have a

mustache i'm gonna say it is something you use to like apply so instead of removing something you applying something like like how you apply beard oil you apply mustache oil with a mustache spoon and it's just like a little tiny guy that you're like all right i think that though you're both wrong sari is closer because the what the there the thing is being is going in not coming off because the mustache spoon was designed to help men with large mustaches eat food without getting dirty. So obvious. It's so literal. So literal.

It was very common in the Victorian area in many countries for men to have big, elaborate mustaches. But that, of course, comes at the cost. Eating was particularly perilous. If they were consuming something hot, the wax holding their mustache shape in place might melt. Oh, no. They could end up with food in all of their facial hair. So they had the mustache spoon, which was a spoon with an added piece of metal called a mustache guard.

And the guard was set above the bowl of the spoon so that as the user brought the spoon to their mouth, the guard would prevent anything from touching the mustache. And in addition to mustache spoons, there were mustache cups that featured various guards to protect the user's mustache from hot tea or other beverages. You could also not slurped. You could have just gone like, like, here comes the airplane. And then that's it. No, no sipping, nothing tilting into your mustache at all.

Tea, too. These were fancy times. Just drink your tea like the guy from the man show with two beers. The guy from the man show. He probably had a mustache. Y'all remember that? God, I'm old. I'm still old, you guys.

I'm just as old as I was at the beginning of the podcast. A little bit more, even. All right, the man show. Word number two is sphagnikins. What? Sphagnikins? Sphagnikins. Sphagnikins.

Sphagnikins. Wow. Would you pass that sphagnikin? Hey there. Nice sphagnikin you got there. I'm trying to like test it out. See the taste of the word. Applied makeup.

I'm going to say applied makeup of some sort. Applied makeup. You apply makeup with a spagnikin. I do think it's like some sort of like napkin. Oh, shoot. Or something like that. I'm going to say it's like to wipe off a seat before you were gonna sit it's like a a specific handkerchief a heavy duty handkerchief where you're like i'm i'm gonna do

something i'm gonna sit here wipe it off with a sphagnum sam just for clarity you're still on makeup right yeah i know it's a butt thing but it's still on makeup it's not a butt thing okay but that might have gotten you closer than sarah but sarah certainly with a heavy duty napkin has has got it because it was a an early commercial feminine hygiene product which gets its name from one of its main materials which is sphagnum moss i don't know if you know about sphagnum but it's a moss and it's absorbent uh has a lot so prior to the development of sanitary napkins people who menstruated would use pieces of cloth to absorb

the fluids instead the first disposable product for menstruation was sold in 1896 by johnson and johnson so they were up to it even back then but it didn't sell particularly well the creation of better surgical dressings during world war one led to the creation of better menstruation products as well, including the sphagnum, which was created by the sphagnum moss products company. It's like, what do we do with this?

Moss. I just got to come up with more ideas. We got so much damn moss. Sphagnum moss can absorb more than 20 times its dry weight in fluid and also has antibacterial properties. As a sanitary napkin, the moss was wrapped up in gauze

and sold with safety pins that you could use to attach it to undergarments. The package featured a girl dressed up in a uniform similar to those that Red Cross nurses wore. Ultimately, Sphikins didn't sell that well though losing out to kotex and its cotton equivalents that showed up in the market around the same time i think the marketing strategy was wrong i think you don't dress

them up as a little nurse you dress them up as a little like forest gremlin you want to be one with nature use moss of course you're not gonna win with cotton if you have a little nurse you have to lean into your demographic of a lady crawling out of the swamp yeah well sarah's killing it so far and our final word uh word number three is a beard token i i'm probably going to lose this one, but it popped into my head and I love it. A beard token is like a locket for a beard that you loved very, very much. Once you shave it off, you collect all the little shavings and you put them in a beard token. And then you're like, rip to that beard. Man, I love that guy. Keep it close to my heart.

I don't know. I'm not even going to try to top that. Man, I love that guy. Keep it close to my heart. Yeah. I don't know. I'm not even going to try to top that. It's like a thing you'd give to a barber and they'd cut your beard for free or something like that. One free beard trimming, please.

That is definitely closer to the true fact, Sam. Wow. Okay. In that it is related to money and it's a kind of currency. So beard tokens were a coin given to Russian men in the 18th century to show that they had paid their beard tax. So you could be like, the official would be like,

you got a beard and you'd be like, nope, I'm good. I did it. I paid my beard tax because in 1698 when Tsar Peter the Great returned from a trip to Europe that inspired his plan to Europeanize Russia in part through style changes like removing facial hair. He gathered various diplomats and aides, and then he bought a barber's razor so that he could shave all their beards himself.

Shaved by the Tsar. Amazing. Presumably, he could not be the personal barber to all of Russia, so he instituted a beard tax to incentivize people to shave their beards. To keep your beard, you had to pay 100 rubles. If you were a peasant, you could keep your beard until you went into a city, at which point you might have to pay a small fine. What the hell? But to show that you'd pay your tax, you'd be given a token of copper,

or if you paid more, you could get a silver one. The coin was embossed with the image of lips, mustache, and a beard. The tax was eventually repealed, though, in like a hundred years. It's a handsome token, though. Yeah, I want one. I bet they're very expensive. Maybe we could fake them. We could make a fake beard token. Make fake beard tokens.

This company right here already is doing that. You can get them for $10. You can buy them from the Smithsonian as well. Dang it. Other people had the idea first. The beard token of the month club. That's Hank's new club. All right.

Sari is still in the lead with two to Sam's one. Next up, we're going to take a short break, and then it's time for the fact off. SciShow Tangents is brought to you today by Hinson Shaving. I am a beard shaver, and as such, I got to tell you, shaving can be not fun. You can go to the store and get some cheapo razor that's going to clog up with every swipe and go dull almost instantly.

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Absolutely. The thing that I really like about it is that there's no plastic handle. There's no nasty little plastic cartridge that gets all gunky and you have to throw away every few weeks. It's all metal, baby. So it's helping me cut down on my plastic consumption, which hosting the show has made me very anxious about. It's time to say no to subscriptions and yes to a precision engineered razor that will last you a lifetime. Visit hensonshaving.com slash tangents to pick the razor for you and use code tangents and you will get two years worth of blades for free with your razor. Just make sure that you add them to your cart. That's 100 free blades. When you head to hensonshaving.com slash tangents, use the code tangents.

Now get ready for the fact time. Our panelists have all brought science facts to present in an attempt to blow my mind. And after they have all presented their facts, I will judge them and award Hank bucks any way I see fit. But to decide who goes first, I have a trivia question. Fish can't just rely on the water all around them to keep them clean. Sometimes they need help removing ectoparasites on their bodies or bits of diseased skin. Luckily, in the ocean, there are small fish that help with that problem. These fish occupy small areas called cleaning stations that other reef fish can show up to for inspection. Between 2005 and 2009, scientists studying an area near the Philippines watched as pelagic thresher sharks approached a cleaning station run by a fish called the blue-streaked cleaner wrasse. How long was the average shark visit to the cleaning station run by a fish called the Blue Streaked Cleaner Wrath. How long was the

average shark visit to the cleaning station? I love that you said run by like he's got a little business, which he does. Got a little business. Come on by. Visit me. I'm a fish. I think they're getting these sharks out. I think they're in there for

four minutes tops. I think they're luxuriating i think this is a we'll sit on down we're gonna wash your feet clean your ectoparasites i think it's like 30 minutes like a full oh wow i don't think a shark has 30 minutes to spare but okay sam is much closer at six and a half minutes 6.27 if you want to get all the significant figures in the paper the scientists called the visiting sharks clients which is even better cute during the period they were watching the cleaning station they documented 97 visits see they got a lot of sharks to get through. You're right. You're right. They take walk-ins.

The longest visit, though, was 23 minutes. Oh, that's the king of sharks. Like the deluxe treatment. Or that was a nasty shark. That stinky, stinky shark. Kept trying to leave. You didn't get the bit back there. Oh, boy. Yeah.

Like when you want to run through the car wash a second time. They always say that. These are like, do you want to go around a second time? And I'm like, nah, I don't actually care. All right. That means that, Sam, you get to go first. All right. Here I go.

Health, hygiene, and beauty tips are basically inescapable. For better and worse, things doctors hate, mind-blowing beauty tips of the stars, and today's hottest hairstyles make up a not insignificant portion of clickbait headlines and banner ads. And even before the internet, magazines full of the same kind of tips sat and continue to sit in probably every grocery store in the entire world, I would guess. But just how far back does the human urge to give other people hygiene advice go. In 2016, a team of scientists were excavating the ancient city of Lachish, located in modern-day Israel on the Lachish River. This area was first inhabited by humans approximately 5,500 years ago, and one of its early inhabitants were a group of people known as the Canaanites, I think, a Bronze Age ancient Near East civilization that was was around during the second millennium BCE.

So that's sometime between 2000 BCE and 1001 BCE. So this team is digging up some bronze age structures. They're finding all your basic archeological type stuff like jars, pieces of jars, et cetera. But they also found a little ivory comb, which as we have maybe mentioned at some point, I don't think we ended up doing it. Combs aren't that uncommon an artifact, I assume.

We probably used a lot of combs in the species history. But the team recognized this comb as a lice comb. Hygiene! So they sent this comb back to the lab, determined it was from about 1700 BCE. And they found a fossilized louse nymph on it. So that's pretty cool. After that, the comb sat around in the lab i guess sometimes they would check it out again to see if they could find more

lice or something i don't know but then in 2021 a researcher took a good look at some of the engraving and texture on the comb and noticed that the comb was in fact engraved with 17 one millimeter tall letters forming seven words in the canonite language in english it translates to may this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard ancient hygiene advice from the distant distant past but here's what you got to know about the written canonite language it's thought to date back to enslaved and lower class people of ancient egypt who weren't allowed to or able to learn the large and complicated hieroglyphic writing system used ancient egypt who weren't allowed to or able to learn the large and complicated hieroglyphic writing system used in egypt but eventually they were like oh we need

a way to write our language down so they adapted a few select hieroglyphics into symbols which translated into specific sounds thus creating what many researchers consider to be the original alphabet from which the latin alphabet descended from so back to the comb archaeologists have found examples of canonite writing on other artifacts in ancient graffiti and they've been able to piece together the language from those and other ancient documents about the canonites but this comb was the first time a full sentence from a primary source written in the canonite language was found which also makes it most likely the oldest sentence that we've ever found written in an alphabetic script.

And much like the magazines and clickbait of today, it's giving unsolicited hygiene advice. So, you know, things haven't really changed that much if you think about it. That's fantastic. And I see how that would be helpful

for the removal of, like it's very specifically purpose-built for the removal of bugs. And now we've got a very similar device today with those like super close together times that you use with your child when they get lice. But they don't have fun messages on them. I feel like that's a missed opportunity. They should. This one says.

Separate you from your gross bugs. Kid. You nasty little kid kid you nasty little kid you nasty little kid or like you know how popsicle sticks have jokes on them oh yes have that on it yeah what did one life say to another life uh i don't have a punchline this sucks or something i don't know i don't know what lies to me i guess actually oh yeah this sucks all right sari what do you have so despite the fact that so many humans deal with menstrual hygiene directly or indirectly the scientific literature is pretty scarce and public knowledge can feel even scarcer so in 1980 when the centers for disease control and prevention the cdc pointed to super absorbent tampons as a co-factor in causing a brand new illness called

toxic shock syndrome, there was quite a public health scare. And I don't know about other people, but instilling fear of toxic shock was a key element of my teenage health education. And this incident is actually the origin of all that. So for context, toxic shock syndrome is a pretty rare illness, but it can be life-threatening if you don't get treatment quickly. It can happen in any person infected with enough Staphylococcus aureus bacteria that there's a buildup of specific toxins in the bloodstream, which causes an overreaction from your immune system that leads to things like fever, low blood pressure, and organ failure or possibly death.

There were hundreds to thousands of cases of toxic shock syndrome in the US in the 1970s and 1980s, many of which were in menstruating people using super absorbent tampons, which is why the CDC sounded the alarms. And after years of research, I had to include this because I wanted to know. We learned why this happened, including things like the newish synthetic absorbent materials, introducing pockets of oxygen into a typically anaerobic environment or causing abrasions to the vaginal wall and the higher pH of menstrual blood. All of that kind of combined to the perfect storm that let already existing staph bacteria in some people multiply to dangerous levels. And mucus membranes allow things like toxins to absorb into the bloodstream

more easily. But at the time, we didn't know any of that. And the CDC and FDA were just like, oh, no, to be safe, people should avoid super absorbent tampons because they seem bad. But then they realized that companies were all making different claims about absorbency. And thus, the Tampon Task Force was assembled in 1982 by the American Society for Testing and Materials. It is a truly wild name for a group of companies, social activist organizations, and researchers that together had to try and agree with each other on menstrual hygiene, which is the wildest assignment to give that giant group of people, including Johnson and Johnson was there too. No sphagnum moss.

The sphagnum moss people, however, had just gone back to the swamp. Yeah, where they should be. But basically, they came up with a standard scale of whether a tampon is regular or super or super plus by measuring the grams of fluid it can absorb. To do that, they designed a wild contraption called the syngina, short for synthetic vagina.

Oh, boy. They shoved a tampon in and trickled salt water on it to measure absorbency, which is weirdly similar to all those commercials nowadays that people make fun of. And anyone who knew even a fraction about menstruation was like, wait, saltwater is nothing like the blood mucus cellular debris goop that tampons actually have to deal with. And one lab went a little rogue and tested with expired donated red blood cells that they sourced from a nearby hospital and found that tampons actually absorb a higher mass of blood than saline solution, which you think would be valuable data that other people would follow up on, but it didn't lead anywhere, mostly because the tampon task force was disbanded in 1985 after

three short years, and we were left with synginas and saline solutions as the industry standard that continues today. And the whole reason I found out about this was a study published in August 2023, so very recently, that tested menstrual hygiene products with expired donated human blood and said that was unusual in their press release. So basically, there's a ton of room for research and important public health knowledge with this sector of hygiene. And we need more tampon task force and other type of task force, apparently. I mean, blood isn't hard to get especially non-human blood which definitely seems like it would be better than saline yeah so i just feel like that should be the thing that we did

that seems like a pretty obvious conclusion to draw but but now did this have something to do with toxic shock syndrome that like did it turn out that like it was it was like we just had to change the way we were doing it and it became less of a problem so toxic shock syndrome like spurred the formation of the tampon task force and it allowed people to choose less absorbent tampons and like standardized them so people could choose ones that are more suited for them and then separately from this there's just been like better education on it and i think better materials used where like don't use super absorbent and leave it in for 12 plus hours. Right. You want to like use a less absorbent tampon and change it more regularly,

but scare people appropriately, which is very hard to do. Yeah. Hearing people appropriately is so hard because there's a bell curve of scared. Then in order to get everybody to appropriately scared, you have to push a lot of people into too scared. And that is I don't know how to solve that problem from a public health perspective. Synginous.

Synginous are the answer. That's what we need. Yes. Just make whole human bodies without brains and we'll do stuff to them. Totally ethical and good, Hank. Yeah, what can we scare people bad enough with that that'll become normal

and good? We'll figure it out. Oh, I have to choose a winner. That's a weird gesture. It made sense to me yeah just let the truth the truths

flow through me pray to Hygiena the Greek goddess yes you're communing with Hygiena Hygiena how's it going god damn okay I think it's wild to me that they that this is so new and that we have so

recently i mean this is both quite new but that we have so recently found the first ever sentence and that it's related to hygiene that's got to be the winner that's got to be the winner and i think that it puts sam over the top i was gonna going to say, I think it's not the first. It's the first sentence in an alphabetical thing. I think there's probably a, yes, a different dialect or a different writing system that has it. But yeah, it's our first sentence. In our alphabet and something related to our alphabet, which is dope. All right.

Now it's time to ask the science couch. We've got a listener question for our couch of finely honed scientific minds. Luka Luke on Discord asks, how bad or not bad is aluminum in deodorant or antiperspirant? If it's bad, it's very hard to tell. We have not found a lot of evidence that it's bad. And that usually indicates that if it is bad, it's very a little bit bad.

But I actually don't know well enough to say that with any confidence. You don't know? You can't say very a little bit bad with any confidence? Is that what I said? Yeah. Yeah, that's what I mean, though. You know what I mean.

Yeah, I do. Hit the nail on the head. Anyone coming to Tandence for a clickbait headline answer is going to get, sometimes very, a little bit as the answer, for sure. So the first antiperspirant was called Everdry and trademarked in 1903 in the US. And Everdry's active ingredient was aluminum chloride and the way that aluminum salts work in antiperspirant is that they cause an obstruction of sweat gland ducts and so what we think happens is the metal ions react in some way with the mucus polysaccharides muco polysaccharides and clog them up and they kind of damage the epithelial cells the skin cells around the glands and they form like a gooey plug that blocks sweat

output for a given amount of time like it seems like something you shouldn't do is how i feel it's like the body's normal function let's stop that from happening. And that was like the main anti-sentiment when antiperspirants first came out was that blocking sweating, sweating is natural. Blocking sweating is unhealthy. And I think that kind of snowballed into even after we found formulations that let the aluminum salts exist. And the three big ones that like people are worried about with these aluminum compounds in antiperspirants are cancer, specifically breast cancers, because

you're applying antiperspirants in many cases to armpit area, but there hasn't been any convincing evidence or consistent evidence that antiperspirant or aluminum compounds from antiperspirant collects in breast tissue leads to cancer tumor growth or anything like that. Um, even if they found detected a couple chemicals, there was no link between that and breast cancer risk. The second one was Alzheimer's because in the 1960s, a couple of studies were finding, um, levels of aluminum in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease. And people just made the connection of like, oh, there's aluminum in brains. Oh, there's aluminum in antiperspirant. So there was a lot of fear and other studies in the 1970s and onwards, the findings, like no findings were replicated that aluminum and antiperspirant could make its way to the brain

in any way or has anything to do with neurodegeneration. It kind of stays goopy in your sweat pores and that's it. And then same thing with the third one was kidney disease. So there were concerns when dialysis patients were given a drug called aluminum hydroxide to help people control high phosphorus levels in their blood. And then their kidneys, um, couldn't remove the aluminum fast enough, but taking a,

a drug orally is very different from like rubbing something on your skin with your sweat glands. Um, and they're two very different, like aluminum hydroxide is very different from aluminum chloride or other compounds and antiferspirants. Again, the aluminum that you rub on in antiperspirants. Again, the aluminum that you rub on your skin or get into your sweat glands,

like once that mucus or the dead skin or whatever you're doing to clog up your pores gets excreted and you sweat again, it kind of washes its way out. So according to dermatologists, as far as I have read, I tried to investigate these as thoroughly as I could. There isn't really anything, but I think it's rooted in this idea that it's unnatural to block your sweat. And metal chemicals around our body, uh-oh, which I don't know, is always really complicated when you're communicating health and medicine.

Like I'm poking a little bit of fun and maybe being a little bit mean because I know our audience is also like trust science, but I think this can be really scary for people who don't necessarily understand and hear messages like aluminum in my deodorant could be bad for me and my brain or could cause cancer. It is remarkable though, how good we have gotten at, like you hear about like an increase in the chance of cancer and it's much smaller than it sounds, but like epidemiologists are looking at

how do you, you're looking at like a hundred people per hundred thousand, you know? And it's like, how do you get that to 99 is what they're thinking or 97 or 95, but eat fiber, eat healthy exercise. We know what works. We don't have to do fat diets. It's been the same fat diet forever. Eat less sugar, eat plants, eat protein. That's it.'s it fiber there should be fiber in the food this is what my doctor was telling me yesterday um he's like you need to be healthier now because you're you got all this shit wrong with you because we poisoned you i'm like what does that

mean he's like just eat you know it's what it sounds like, man. But what about the Cadbury eggs you find on the ground, Hank? I don't know. YouTube just sent me a bunch of Pringles. Great. Anyway, let's end the episode. If you like this show and you want to help us out, super easy to do that. First, you go to patreon.com

slash SciShowTangents, become a patron, get access to our newsletter our bonus episodes and big news we have hit 700 patrons on the tangents patreon which means we're going to be doing our minions commentary i don't know when i'm gonna do it get ready it's a clock a whole lot of this if that sounds good to you be sure to join our Patreon at any level to get access to that commentary as soon as it's released. Second, leave us a review wherever you listen. That's very helpful. It helps us know what you like about the show. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us.

We'll see you next time for our first episode of our annual trick-or-treat month of surprise guests but for now thank you for joining us i've been hank green i've been siri riley uh sorry i panicked i was like am i next is created by all of us and produced by sam schultz our associate producer is new schmidt our editor is seth glicksman Our story editor is Alex Billow. Our social media organizer is Julia Buzz Bazaio. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. Our sound design is by

Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our executive producers are Nicole Sweeney and me, Hank Green. And of course, we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you, and remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled. But one more thing. In many cases, we learn about personal hygiene because our parents tell us, wash your hands or don't lick that. And a study published in February 2023 suggests that the same might be true for mandrills, the biggest kind of monkey.

These researchers observed mandrills grooming each other socially with one exception. When many group members were infected with gut parasites, some females avoided grooming the perianal region of other monkeys. The researchers classify this butthole avoidance as hygienic behavior because it helps these females avoid parasite-related illness. Over the six years of observations, they noticed that mother-daughter or maternal half-sister pairs of mandrills share similar hygiene when it comes to perianal grooming. So basically, it seems like the moms are telling their daughters

not to touch someone else's parasite-ridden butthole. Great advice if I ever heard it.