Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Wed, 19 Feb 2025
This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers, Bon Charge, and Maui Nui. Every year, seven million people die prematurely due to poor air quality. While it may not be obvious, the air we breathe directly impacts our health—contributing to allergies, autoimmune conditions, lung diseases, and even neurodegenerative disorders. Today’s guest joins us to explain why air quality should be a key part of the conversation on toxin exposure and how to reduce our risk of toxic air. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Dr. Elroy Vojdani to discuss the critical link between air quality and the rise in severe health conditions. Dr. Vojdani explains why air quality isn’t discussed enough, how to monitor it, and how to adjust your daily activities accordingly. He also breaks down the best ways to support detoxification, the top supplements for recovering from toxin exposure, and practical tips for improving indoor air quality at home and in the office. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Elroy Vojdani dive into: The conditions linked to poor air quality (00:28) Why air quality isn’t widely discussed—and what makes it so harmful (02:17) The link between diagnosis and uncovering the true cause of toxin exposure (09:25) Key fundamentals to minimize exposure (12:46) How to measure and monitor air quality to adjust daily activities (15:51) How poor air quality can contribute to autoimmune conditions (30:01) The after-effects of the LA fires and essential precautions (38:34) The connection between hearing loss and Alzheimer’s risk (45:29) How Bryan Johnson’s trip to India sparked a conversation about air quality (50:49) Evidence-based supplements for detoxification and the role of sweating (52:49) Avoiding misinformation and a ‘doom and gloom’ mentality (58:22) Why outdoor air is often cleaner than indoor air (1:02:22) Dr. Elroy’s advice on advocating for air filters in schools (1:04:32) Final thoughts (1:05:44) Also mentioned in this episode: Atmo Air Monitor Aware Indoor Air Quality Monitor Nithin Kamath with Bryan Johnson viral video AquaTru and Air Doctor Filters IQ Air Freakanomics Air Quality Podcast Dr. Elroy’s book - When Food Bites Back: Taking Control of Autoimmune Disease For more on Dr. Elroy, follow him on Instagram, Facebook, X/Twitter, YouTube, and his Website. This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers, Bon Charge, and Maui Nui. Go to bioptimizers.com/dhru now and enter promo code DHRU10 to get 10% off any order of Sleep Breakthrough and find out this month’s gift with purchase. Right now, BON CHARGE is offering my community 15% off; just go to boncharge.com/DHRU and use coupon code DHRU to save 15%. Right now, Maui Nui Venison is offering my community 15% off your first purchase. Just go to mauinuivenison.com/DHRU or enter the code DHRU at checkout to get 15% off and up your high-quality protein today. Offer ends 2/28/2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the main issue with air quality?
Dr. Elroy Vajdani, welcome back to the podcast. You are here to put the spotlight on one of the most silent, deadly killers out there in the world. In fact, every year, it's estimated that 7 million people die prematurely from this major issue. Talk to us about how big of a problem air quality is and why our audience should care about it.
Air quality should be in the upper parts of the conversation of environmental risks to us from a health perspective. I think plastics, metals, all these things that have been talked about a lot out there in the last few years, yes, they're concerning. But when you start to dive into the data about what
living in a major city in the United States entails as far as risk is concerned, and how many different ways it impacts you, it's quite alarming. So, you know, it's everything from what you expect, which is a lung related risk, asthma, COPD, cancer, premature aging, to allergy and autoimmune diseases to skin related conditions like eczema. I mean, the list is really everything across the board.
Neurodegenerative diseases are elevated in major cities thought to be related to air pollution. So we should be talking about this at the top of the list.
Chapter 2: Why isn't air quality discussed more?
Why don't you think enough people, I mean, we live in Los Angeles and now everybody's talking about air quality right now in LA. But when you look around the US, still, it's not as of a focus of a conversation as other areas. And then you go globally, there's a major lack of awareness. I'm from the country of India. It has 13 to 11 of the most polluted air quality cities in the world.
It's estimated that in India alone, people die on average 10 years earlier from air quality. And then on top of that, more people are dying early deaths from air quality than even cancer. That's how bad the problem is. But why aren't people really having this conversation outside of a major incident of a situation like we're in, which was the devastating LA wildfires?
I think here in the U.S., it's probably because we make the assumption that it's so much better than it was than when you and I were kids in the 80s and 90s, right? Like that was a time where major cities literally like you would live in a cloud of smog. And because of the measures in the automobile and industrial world to kind of reduce the pollutant emissions,
uh release have improved so much we don't see it as much and i think we just assume that means that things are okay and then you know something like this major fire in los angeles happens and it becomes top of mind again as you know as it should but what i hope happens from that is As we dive into this, it becomes top of mind for everyone in all major cities.
And we bring the necessary awareness to everyone to really focus on it. Another part of it is because we haven't talked about it because it hasn't been something that we've been forced to think about.
And I do want to give props to a lot of cities in the U.S. Things have cleaned up a bunch, especially here in Los Angeles. Los Angeles did used to have really significantly bad air quality. And there were a lot of regulations that were passed and attention that was placed on it. Some manufacturing that was moved away from the city.
Improvements in car manufacturing, like better catalytic converters. Mm-hmm. And it made a significant difference. People don't realize, but Los Angeles in the area that I live on the West side, we're not too far away from there, Santa Monica, it has way better quality of air than a lot of major European cities. I was looking at like
santa monica and other places in uh united states the air quality is way better than cities like paris and and other european countries that people typically think of as being like oh like clean and better quality air so i do want to give hats off to america for doing a lot of cleanup there still are some things to be paying attention to but the bigger issue for everybody listening today regardless of where they live
is that most people don't realize that the EPA alone estimated that indoor air can be up to 300 to 500 times worse than outdoor air. So no matter how bad your outdoor air is, and that is something that we should be paying attention to, I want to start the conversation first with indoor air. So why is our indoor air quality for so many people so bad?
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Chapter 3: How can air quality affect autoimmune conditions?
Chapter 4: What are practical ways to improve indoor air quality?
Chapter 5: How to monitor air quality effectively?
And then you've got a situation in which if you're not, you know, filtering and have appropriate air systems built in, you're not getting a lot of fresh air coming in as well, too. So it just kind of builds over time.
So I want to take a step back. If you wouldn't mind, for those that haven't heard you on the podcast before, I believe this is your fourth visit. So it's an honor to have you back. Yeah. What type of doctor are you? And also, where does air quality sit within the things that you see the people that you work with in terms of making them better? sick. Like how do you think about air quality?
Is it enough to make people sick? Is it taking things that they're already dealing with and making it worse when people are exposed to sort of poor air quality? Like help us contextualize a little bit. One of the number one complaints I hear from my community is that it's hard for them to shut their mind off at night when they're getting ready for bed.
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Chapter 6: What precautions should be taken after environmental disasters?
this toxic burden that you're dealing with, this much comes from air, this much comes from water, this much comes from your cosmetics that are not clean, this much comes from diet. It all just kind of gets enmeshed into the body as one homogenized thing.
Yeah. Let's talk about that and then move into the two and a half fine particle mass. That's absolutely true. You can't, you know, look at all these individual areas and say, this is where this problem came from. That's where this problem came from. So what do you do about that? The first thing is,
Understand that the goal of improving your health from an environmental perspective is not to be a perfectionist about everything. It's to make meaningful differences in the areas where differences can be made. Right. So low hanging fruit. Don't drink out of a plastic bottle. Don't microwave things in plastic containers. Right. There are equal things as far as air quality is concerned.
Have a filter at home for your water, reverse osmosis if possible.
Exactly, right? You know, so do the fundamental things. And when you do the fundamental things, you dramatically reduce your overall exposure. That's, I think, the best that you can do in these situations outside of, you know, clean eating and maybe taking supplements to protect yourself.
But this is not a, you know, a conversation in which I want people to take away from this, like, we're screwed. We're living in this, like, you know, complete toxic mess. Yes, but that knowledge is very important because it gives you an ability to make meaningful changes.
Yeah. It's kind of like plastics. Plastics are everywhere. Yes. You cannot avoid them. They're in plant and agricultural manufacturing. They're in even like wild grazing meat. They're in all sorts of different things, but you can minimize your total exposure and do the best that you can.
Yeah.
And so you're saying that the same thing is true with air quality.
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Chapter 7: What is the relationship between air quality and chronic diseases?
Chapter 8: How can we advocate for better air quality in public spaces?
There's actually an article that was written about this in like the New York Times that like the airlines know this is a big issue, but like there's no solution that they've kind of come up with about how to deal with this. You're sitting in the airplane and you're like, dude, it smells like intense. Like this cannot be good for you.
And I would measure it and the air quality dipped like super low. They have their own scale where they're measuring all these different things and they give you a number from zero to 100. Sure. And I was like, what else in my life besides my home is like this? And at the time, I had just got a car for my wife and we went to go pick it up after a trip.
And we were sitting in the car and I was measuring the air quality, the air quality inside from that quote unquote new car smell.
Horrifying.
That so many people... are addicted to, kind of like gasoline. They like that smell. It was terrible. It was terrible. And we had already paid for the car and everything like that. And everywhere we drove, we would drive with the windows cracked, which would make a significant difference. New air would be coming in from the outside.
And the air quality would be, on average, when we didn't have the windows open, it'd be around like 37%. 40 which is pretty bad yeah and it would get back into like the 80s 85 90s and then we realized that the car that we had this is this is uh a splurge and i'm not telling anybody to have this sort of situation but there's some cars now that have hapa filters yes they do
And I turned it on and immediately the air quality went from when we had the window shut 37 to 99 after a few minutes of it running. And it just showed me like, wow, I would have, you know, my wife and I, we want to start a family. You know, we're in that phase of our life. We're both have trying to protect our health.
You know, I'm trying to pay attention to my health, as you know, because I've been working through some stuff that's there. And I was like, I would have driven around for two, three years with this. air quality inside the car if I didn't have it measured and known that this was an issue.
We did a few things that I can talk about to sort of accelerate some of the off-gassing that was there based on some tips. We would have it regularly sort of cleaned on the inside with clean things. But even then, it probably took a year before we could sit in the car and the VOC's PM 2.5, PM 10 was at a level where it would have been stable. But even still, we'll run the HEPA filter in the car.
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