WEBVTT - The Strange Story of Lysol 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:07.200 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:13.360 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:16.120 Chuck and it's just us. Almost said Jerry's here too, 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:19.640 but she's not. Instead, it's just us. I already said 0:00:19.680 --> 0:00:23.120 that too, And this is stuff you should that's right. 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:26.880 And this was a listener's suggestion. So we wanted to 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:31.920 thank Holland le Mere who wrote in and said, guys, 0:00:32.560 --> 0:00:34.360 I don't know if you had anything know anything about 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:37.879 the history of Lysol, the disinfectant, but it has a 0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:41.839 pretty fascinating, weird history, and I think it would make 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:44.440 a good episode. And I think Holland was right on 0:00:44.479 --> 0:00:44.840 the money. 0:00:45.200 --> 0:00:48.559 Yeah. Also thanks to our buddy Kyle Hookstra, our British 0:00:48.560 --> 0:00:50.880 writer holding it down in the UK for us, who 0:00:50.880 --> 0:00:52.200 helps us out with this one too. 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:56.680 That's right. I love Kyle's articles because they are all 0:00:56.800 --> 0:01:01.600 metric and there's even some to British spellings. He's like, 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:04.039 I'm not going to americanize it for you Trumps, just yeah, 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:05.040 figure it out. 0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:08.440 Oh you like your z's ts for you, here's an s. 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:11.800 Aluminum. 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:16.080 Yeah. So yeah, so we're talking today about Lysol. Who 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:18.880 was that Holland great name. Yeah, hall ind suggested this. 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:22.480 And for those of you who don't know, Lysol is 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:26.800 a leading disinfectant brand in the West. I think it's 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:30.160 like the third best selling disinfectant in the United States. 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:34.959 It's Lysol. You know what I'm talking about, right, I do, sure, 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:38.679 I think most people do. And Lysol had a recent 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:45.480 I guess, a big jolt in its history, as most 0:01:45.480 --> 0:01:50.800 disinfectants did, thanks to the pandemic, the COVID pandemic of 0:01:50.920 --> 0:01:53.680 twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, where its sales just 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:57.360 went through the roof. Apparently it increased its sales by 0:01:57.400 --> 0:02:02.520 twelve percent and just one year and they were producing 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:06.320 thirty five million cans, just the cans of Lyesol in 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:10.600 North America alone every month. That's how crazy people were 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:15.160 for Lysol. And yet when pandemic went away, people kind 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:17.720 of put their Lysol away as well. In their sales 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:20.160 storry to go down. And as we'll see, that's actually 0:02:20.280 --> 0:02:21.560 kind of a good thing. 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:26.000 Probably. Yeah, And this is not a takedown or anything. 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:28.320 This is just we're gonna talk about some interesting history. 0:02:28.600 --> 0:02:32.639 We talk a little bit about how all disinfectants work, 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:38.359 and we might even suggest some alternatives but you're sweet pippy. 0:02:39.960 --> 0:02:42.959 So the question of why do you want to disinfect 0:02:43.000 --> 0:02:47.040 something in your house in the first place is valid? Well, 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:51.119 it is because if you subscribe to the germ theory, 0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:57.200 then you might think that disinfecting surfaces might kill a 0:02:57.280 --> 0:03:01.960 virus that might be in your house. So that's a 0:03:02.000 --> 0:03:04.359 reason right there, for sure. 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:07.840 I mean, that's the point of disinfectants, right and the way, 0:03:07.919 --> 0:03:09.919 let's talk real quick about how they actually work, because 0:03:09.960 --> 0:03:11.040 I find this fascinating. 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:14.560 Yeah, it's on a cellular level, right, sure. 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:20.240 So there's a bunch of different ingredients in disinfectants, like lysol, 0:03:20.919 --> 0:03:23.080 but some of them are more active than others. But 0:03:23.120 --> 0:03:25.280 you can't overlook one in favor of another because when 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:27.040 you turn around and look, you're like, oh, that does this, 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:29.480 that does this, that kills this, that kills this. But 0:03:29.520 --> 0:03:31.400 if you put all of it together, you have a 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:36.120 disinfectant that can kill microbes, that can kill viruses. A 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:40.440 lot of them are anti fungal. They're just they just kill, 0:03:40.480 --> 0:03:43.120 like you said, on a cellular level. And one of 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:44.760 the ways that they do that, one of the main 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:48.400 ways they do it is by disrupting whatever outer layer 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:51.840 that microbe or that virus has that protects its inerds, 0:03:52.120 --> 0:03:54.880 and by doing that, it's inerds spill out, go through 0:03:54.920 --> 0:04:00.760 all sorts of horrible transformations, and the bacteria viruses like 0:04:00.920 --> 0:04:02.760 uh A two lysol. 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:08.160 That's right, and lysol works like you know, all disinfectants 0:04:08.840 --> 0:04:13.800 by doing that. But Lysol specifically developed one of the 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:18.440 first quats qu at s. We've talked about quats before 0:04:18.520 --> 0:04:22.039 in terms of like pesticides, I think probably, yeah, I 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:25.360 feel like we've talked about that, okay, I believe you, 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:29.800 I just know you, okay. But they introduce a quat 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:33.760 in its formula in the eighteen eighties, a long long 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:40.200 time ago. Quats are it's short for is actually technically 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:45.480 qac YEA. It's spelled out quat because it's a quaternary 0:04:45.560 --> 0:04:48.920 ammonium compound. And what they introduced in the eighteen eighties 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:55.080 was one called benzolconium chloride. Pretty active ingredient these days 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:59.360 and disinfectants very potent to all. Quats are rarey potent 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:04.880 against germs at pretty low concentrations I think is about 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:08.640 two point four percent is a sweet spot. But like 0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:11.080 you said, you combine these with other stuff and you're 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:13.560 in business. In this case, if you combine it with alcohol, 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:17.719 there's a change that happens that makes it kill things faster, 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:22.400 kill more things. And lysol doesn't use that one anymore. 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:23.680 They use a different one now though, right. 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:30.880 Yeah, it's evolved into benzalconium saccharinate. I think that's right. 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:37.559 And it's essentially just almost a proprietary version of benzolconium 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:41.960 benzelconium chloride, right, But it's just different enough, as we'll 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:45.240 see that it makes lysol kind of its own thing. 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:49.320 And like you said, they add alcohol, and alcohol itself 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:52.880 is a germ killing machine, especially with viruses, because it 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:56.680 just it cuts right through the viral envelope and lets 0:05:56.720 --> 0:06:01.200 all the DNA spill out or RNA, and viruses don't 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:03.160 like that kind of thing. One of the other things 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:06.840 that happens too. When the quad and ethanol combine, they 0:06:06.920 --> 0:06:11.359 undergo a synergistic change essentially, and they do all sorts 0:06:11.400 --> 0:06:16.240 of nasty stuff. Specifically, they d nature cells, which means 0:06:16.240 --> 0:06:20.880 that they break the chemical bonds that hold the molecules together, 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:23.760 and again that's not good if you're a bacteria. 0:06:24.400 --> 0:06:27.520 Yeah, so like it, the cell wall kind of dissolves, 0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:29.640 and then like you said, everything spills out and then 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:31.760 those proteins are just busted up. 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:36.320 Yeah, they coagulate. Different proteins coagulate, which renders them totally useless. 0:06:36.360 --> 0:06:38.360 It's not like they can go back to how they were. Like, 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:41.599 the poor bacterium is probably trying to keep its guts 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:44.559 in and yet they're useless even if it could patch 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:45.279 itself up. 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:48.680 Yeah, And a couple of things if you're talking about 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:56.039 the effectiveness of a disinfectant is concentration and the contact time. 0:06:56.160 --> 0:06:58.840 So there has to be what's called an MIIC or 0:06:58.880 --> 0:07:03.719 a minimum inhibitory concentration. I think we said two point 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:07.479 four percent is like, is the low concentration end where 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:10.960 it's still potent in the case of lyesol, And then 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:15.080 the contact time. If you read the I'm not even 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:18.040 saying just lyesol, but if you read any disinfectant, you 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:21.080 may see in five fine prints something like, you know, 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:24.680 spray and leave it on there for four to ten minutes. 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:27.800 Yeah, well, I saw wipes. Depending on which one you have, 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:29.960 it's four minutes or ten minutes. Is crazy. 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:33.040 Yeah, And a lot of people don't know this, and 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:35.080 so if they use something like this in their house, 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:37.960 we don't. But if you do, you might just spray 0:07:38.000 --> 0:07:41.400 it and wipe it off right afterward, thinking you're accomplishing 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:42.080 something you're not. 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:43.080 No. 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:46.440 I read an interview with the microbiologist who is saying, 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:49.000 like when I clean my house like this, like say 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:51.680 I'll spray a door knob, I just let it sit 0:07:51.720 --> 0:07:55.480 for a minute before I wipe it off. And usually 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:58.480 with the spray a minute'll do it. But the point is, 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:03.000 it's not like it's just immediate disrupts all germs or 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:07.120 microbial life that it encounters on contact. It takes a 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:09.840 couple of minutes for it to really do its job essentially. 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:11.880 Yeah, for sure, Well you want to. 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:15.400 Take an early breaker, Yeah, let's do it. Okay, we're 0:08:15.400 --> 0:08:17.080 gonna take an early break and then we'll come back 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:19.440 and talk about the history of lysol. 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:44.600 Softy jobh so so Chuck. 0:08:44.800 --> 0:08:49.480 I believe Holland said that lysol has a very interesting history. 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:53.120 And Holland was right. And it's a pretty old history too. 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:56.040 I think it was invented in eighteen eighty nine by 0:08:56.440 --> 0:08:58.520 Gustav Roppenstrouk. 0:08:59.360 --> 0:08:59.680 Nice. 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:01.320 Yeah, did I get it? 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:05.920 Pretty dang good, buddy, Ziagut, Well, oh. 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:08.960 Thank you very much, And he was a German chemist, yes, 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:11.840 and he was like, you know, we've got all sorts 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:17.120 of infectious diseases. Most people call them diseases, and but 0:09:17.200 --> 0:09:20.440 he just spoke really strangely, and he said, I'm going 0:09:20.480 --> 0:09:23.880 to come up with something to help, specifically in the 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:27.119 medical setting, a disinfectant that's going to save lives. 0:09:27.520 --> 0:09:31.439 That's right Lyesol back in those days was fifty percent 0:09:31.640 --> 0:09:38.840 creasole in soap, basically so pontified vegetable oil. I kind 0:09:38.840 --> 0:09:41.559 of figured that was like lie from soap and sold 0:09:41.600 --> 0:09:44.000 from the creasol is where you got lysol. But that's 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:45.680 not right either, is it. No? 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:47.400 And as a matter of fact, I have not seen 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:48.800 a definitive answer. 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:51.480 Oh, I thought you sent me something. 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:54.160 I did, and then I saw other stuff elsewhere that 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:57.520 undermined Oh, I guess it. The one that I'm on 0:09:57.880 --> 0:10:01.480 is that the lie is short for lysis, which is 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:05.880 basically like destroying a cell, and then the saw is 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:11.680 short for solvent. That's what I'm on. But again there's 0:10:11.720 --> 0:10:14.320 different interpretations. What's the one I sent you? You remember 0:10:15.800 --> 0:10:16.599 and know what you sent me? 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:19.480 Or no? Maybe, okay, maybe there's not. 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:23.480 Other interpretations. I've just totally lost my mind, and that's it. 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:26.960 It may be it. It was toxic back then with 0:10:27.040 --> 0:10:32.800 that mixture. Cresol was a germ killer and it was 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:35.440 less poisonous what they had been using to disinfect things 0:10:35.480 --> 0:10:39.680 like hospitals at the time, which was carbolic acid. So 0:10:39.720 --> 0:10:41.320 it was a little bit better version of that, but 0:10:41.360 --> 0:10:43.920 it was it was like a brown, a very brown color, 0:10:45.040 --> 0:10:48.400 and it kind of kind of became the go to 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:52.720 antiseptic in the late eighteen hundreds for the medical community. 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:58.520 Yeah, an eighteen ninety three report said, let's defend ourselves 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:02.520 in our homes against the Hama sidle microbe exclamation point 0:11:02.559 --> 0:11:05.679 even and the British Medical Journal was on board that 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:09.160 went's still around, that's how legit this is. They were like, yeah, 0:11:09.320 --> 0:11:12.920 use it on your skin, it'll treat lupus, but beware 0:11:12.960 --> 0:11:14.640 because if you use it too much, it's kind of 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:18.440 caustic and it can crack your skin. And for the 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:24.880 longest time, essentially from invention until the nineteen teens, the 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:28.079 people who bought this stuff were medical professionals, and they 0:11:28.080 --> 0:11:31.840 bought it in the ultra concentrated form. I think you like, 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:35.600 the smallest bottle would turn into two gallons when you 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:38.000 mixed it together with each other like you were supposed 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:40.679 to then so on and so forth, and it was 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:43.920 just a It was what they used for cleaning wounds 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:45.720 and all sorts of stuff like it was like the 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:48.320 original back Team, but way more caustic. 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:53.280 Yeah. Yeah, Things change in nineteen twelve, or started to 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:57.560 change in nineteen twelve when the AMA Council on Pharmacy 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:01.320 and Chemistry said, you know a lot of these patients 0:12:01.320 --> 0:12:04.880 are screaming when we put it on their skin. It's 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:08.320 burning them, clearly because we have eyes and ears, and 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:12.240 this might be too dangerous for human use, so maybe 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:16.120 we shouldn't use it in hospitals. Lynn and Fink, who 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:19.880 were making Lysol at the time, were like, oh crap, 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:24.640 this is our big market. Here is marketing to these hospitals, right, 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:28.480 And so here's what we'll do. We'll reposition it in 0:12:28.559 --> 0:12:33.080 the marketplace and through advertising as something for home use 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:38.560 and for use on women's reproductive organs. 0:12:39.160 --> 0:12:45.640 Yes, yes, let's talk about that, because there was essentially 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:48.320 no point in the history of Lyesol that it should 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:51.480 ever have been used on women's reproductive organs. And yet 0:12:51.720 --> 0:12:55.000 when they lost that market of selling directly to hospitals 0:12:55.440 --> 0:12:57.600 who knew that the field of medicine had its own 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:01.560 journals and that they would start talking amongst themselves. They 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:07.840 essentially created, they re debuted their product as a contraceptive. 0:13:08.800 --> 0:13:12.079 And at the time this was not completely off the wall. 0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:16.600 Using a vaginal douche as a contraceptive. There's no way 0:13:16.600 --> 0:13:17.959 for me to say that and not feel like I'm 0:13:17.960 --> 0:13:21.160 talking about a guy, a guy, you know what I mean. 0:13:21.440 --> 0:13:22.559 It's really taken over. 0:13:22.800 --> 0:13:26.960 Yeah, it has that. This was like the main way 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:30.360 that people prevented birth, and it didn't even work very well, 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:32.680 but this was like all they had at the time. 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:38.080 Essentially, yeah, it was contraception. Well, this is sort of 0:13:38.080 --> 0:13:42.200 one of the early ironies is you could sell lysol 0:13:42.320 --> 0:13:46.280 as a cleaner, you know, those influenza in the early 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:49.320 nineteen hundreds and nineteen teen, so like it was doing 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:54.360 great there, but you could not market it legally as 0:13:54.400 --> 0:13:57.280 a contraceptive, not because it was dangerous and didn't work, 0:13:57.880 --> 0:14:02.199 but because contraceptives were illegal in the US and Canada 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:06.440 from the late nineteenth century eighteen seventy three with a 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:09.959 Comstock Act here. In the US, birth control eventually was 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:13.840 legalized in nineteen sixty five if you were married, if 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:15.640 you wanted to have sex out of marriage and not 0:14:15.679 --> 0:14:17.760 get pregnant, you had to wait until nineteen seventy two 0:14:18.559 --> 0:14:20.880 to get that approval, one year after I was born, 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:26.200 which is shocking. So from nineteen nineteen all the way 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:31.440 through the nineteen sixties, they promoted lysol as an illegal 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:37.880 contraceptive under the banner of the mythological term of feminine hygiene. 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:43.040 Right, and so just because they used that term and 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:47.040 never said this is a contraceptive, they instead said it 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:48.840 with like a wink and a nuts like we all 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:52.560 know what we're talking about, right, And consumers did know. 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:55.840 They were well aware that what Lysol was saying is like, 0:14:55.920 --> 0:15:00.960 if you use this after sex, it's going to kill 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:04.800 anything inside. Right, So don't even worry about all this stuff. 0:15:04.840 --> 0:15:11.840 It's your contraceptive and lysol. Lysol became the number one 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:16.360 contraceptive in the United States from the nineteen thirties through 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:22.280 the nineteen sixties. Chuck lysol. Douching with lysol was what 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:27.280 most people in the United States used as a contraceptive 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:28.800 for thirty years. 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:30.640 Yeah, and by the way, I want to clear up 0:15:30.640 --> 0:15:34.280 real quick, when I said the mythological concept of feminine hygiene. 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:37.960 I don't mean people shouldn't wash their body parts, of course, sure, 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:43.200 I'm talking about this idea of feminine hygiene products and 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:46.920 douching and douching as a contraceptive and all that stuff was, 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:50.480 as far as I can tell, a creation, like a 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:51.360 marketing creation. 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:57.160 Yeah. What's ironic about it is that because you're using 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:01.440 lysol again as a douche, you're killing off all of 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:04.680 the beneficial bacteria in the vagina to begin with. So 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:10.760 you actually are creating the problems that feminine hygiene products 0:16:11.080 --> 0:16:16.960 were supposed to cure. Help. So the market actually created 0:16:17.000 --> 0:16:21.160 itself by this, just the introduction of this. It's nuts. 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:28.560 It's terrible. It's essentially taking advantage of insecure mid century 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:34.880 American women through a really harsh marketing campaign that lasted 0:16:34.920 --> 0:16:35.600 for decades. 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:39.160 Oh yeah, let's talk about some of that. There's a 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:43.560 historian name Kristen Hall who looked at you, just dozens 0:16:43.560 --> 0:16:46.920 and dozens of these lysol advertisements from the day, and 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:49.360 here are just a few examples. And the married woman, 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:54.000 the cleansing antiseptic douche should follow married relations. Lysol is 0:16:54.040 --> 0:16:58.920 the right antiseptic for this delicate purpose. The word germ 0:16:59.000 --> 0:17:01.000 was sort of a stand in for semen in many 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:06.159 cases they had They had ads that are just so 0:17:06.400 --> 0:17:10.600 clearly trying to exploit, like you said, like the idea 0:17:10.640 --> 0:17:13.320 that marital life is the only way to go, and 0:17:14.119 --> 0:17:17.480 a clean woman in the kitchen is one that will 0:17:17.520 --> 0:17:22.560 appeal to her husband for intercourse. Like this one. It 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:25.760 showed a woman literally trapped in an ad, trapped in 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:29.560 a cobweb that said was spun by my husband's indifference 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:34.080 and until she's freed by using Lysol to address careless risks, 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:39.040 then you know, dot dot, she won't get sex from 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:40.600 her husband. Yeah. 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:43.240 So what the ad was essentially saying is their husband's like, 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:45.919 I'm not having another kid. I'd rather just go without 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:48.800 sex than have another kid. And the wife is like, 0:17:48.840 --> 0:17:51.679 but I want sex, And Liesol's like, let us step in. 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:54.159 You start using Lysol. You tell your husband you're going 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:56.440 to use Lysol, he'll be all over you like white 0:17:56.480 --> 0:17:57.000 on rice. 0:17:57.640 --> 0:18:01.280 Yeah. Basically, if you're if if you don't use lysow, 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:04.480 you're not going to have sex anymore and be happy 0:18:04.480 --> 0:18:05.840 in your marriage exactly. 0:18:06.720 --> 0:18:09.880 So this was like the marketing campaign that Lysol came 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:13.080 up with to get women to use Lysol as a contraceptive, 0:18:13.520 --> 0:18:16.920 and it should be noted that at the same time 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:20.680 they were marketing it as a disinfectant for your house, right, 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:23.800 So it would be exactly like buying a jug of 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:27.919 lysol and using it to clean your kitchen and then 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:30.840 using it as a contraceptive the same jug. That was 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:32.920 essentially what was going on for these decades. 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:37.200 Well, yeah, and like you mentioned earlier, not only was dangerous, 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:41.120 as we'll see, but it didn't work. They had these 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:43.400 a study from nineteen thirty three, so this is even 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:47.520 back then they knew, right, and they found basically half 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:49.639 two hundred and fifty of the five hundred and seven 0:18:49.680 --> 0:18:55.840 women who used lysol as a contraceptive douche became pregnant. 0:18:56.960 --> 0:18:59.560 And in the nineteen thirties there were these two doctors, 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:03.399 Sarah Greenberg and Rachel Lynn Palmer that said Lysol's claims 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:05.840 would be laughable were it not for the tragedy of 0:19:05.880 --> 0:19:07.920 the many women who have become pregnant. 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:11.760 But not just get pregnant. They were also like scarring 0:19:11.840 --> 0:19:16.359 their vaginas internally, at the very least inflaming them. Some 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:20.720 women died because if you absorbed some of these things 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:25.520 like qacs and some of the other chemicals I'm sure 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:28.840 probably ethanol as well into your body through the very 0:19:29.640 --> 0:19:34.960 porous vaginal tissue. You can die from poisoning from lysol poisoning, 0:19:35.080 --> 0:19:37.520 and women were dying at the very least hundreds were 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:39.760 ending up in the hospital from it as well. 0:19:40.600 --> 0:19:45.520 Yeah, and if that's not bad enough, because of kresol, 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:49.200 the creasol in the lysol, it was used for illegal 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:53.320 abortions well into the twentieth century. 0:19:53.680 --> 0:19:57.480 Right, And so, like you said, from the thirties, they 0:19:57.520 --> 0:20:01.320 were it was being criticized by the medical community, yet 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:04.680 it just wasn't reaching out to the public at large yet. 0:20:05.080 --> 0:20:08.240 And it wasn't until the sixties that people stopped using 0:20:08.280 --> 0:20:12.919 lysol as a contraceptive almost overnight. And what happened the 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:16.399 next day when they stopped using lysol was that the 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:20.439 pill had just been introduced, and as it became legal 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:24.040 and widespread and people started to be like, this actually works, 0:20:24.560 --> 0:20:26.359 they stopped using lysol immediately. 0:20:27.040 --> 0:20:30.879 Yeah, So lysol didn't stop being used as a contravaginal 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:35.160 contraceptive because it was the word spread that it was dangerous, 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:37.880 it didn't work. It stopped because the pill came along exactly, 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:39.920 which is really hard to believe. 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:43.680 Really, I'll tell you something that's not hard to believe, 0:20:43.720 --> 0:20:45.320 Chuck is let's take our second break. 0:20:45.920 --> 0:20:48.280 Oh another early one. I love it. 0:20:48.840 --> 0:21:10.600 Stop jaw. 0:21:11.400 --> 0:21:15.640 All right, so we're back, Lysol. If you remember from 0:21:15.720 --> 0:21:20.159 Act two, I guess the fact that it was not 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:24.400 viable as a means of birth control after the pill 0:21:24.440 --> 0:21:28.280 came along, or really before actually, in truth, meant that 0:21:28.359 --> 0:21:32.080 it had to change their tune yet again. It gained 0:21:32.119 --> 0:21:35.560 some ubiquity, being referenced in a Sylvia Plath poem The 0:21:35.600 --> 0:21:40.000 Colossus in the nineteen fifties. It was it was just 0:21:40.040 --> 0:21:43.280 a something that seems like it's always been around. There 0:21:43.280 --> 0:21:45.280 have been different forms of it over the years. You 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:49.000 know that disinfectant spray has been around since the sixties sixties. 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:52.200 I think they started cleaning toilets with it in the sixties. 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:57.000 Eventually they started having the hand soaps and disinfecting wipes 0:21:57.040 --> 0:22:00.840 and stuff like that. But they were like, how do 0:22:00.920 --> 0:22:04.359 we sell this stuff in an age where the FTC 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:09.240 basically is endorsing or says that you know your claims 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:12.920 have to be true. You can't be misled, The harm 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:15.720 can't outweigh the benefit and stuff like that, like where 0:22:15.800 --> 0:22:17.880 what's the new path forward? 0:22:18.840 --> 0:22:25.280 Right? So essentially because of this stuff like disinfectants like 0:22:25.359 --> 0:22:30.160 lysol and other brands started just tinkering with their formulas 0:22:30.200 --> 0:22:32.800 and looking for things that were as effective or more 0:22:32.840 --> 0:22:37.000 effective but less toxic. Like for example, in nineteen fifty two, 0:22:37.080 --> 0:22:42.119 they dropped creasol for ortho hydroxy phenol, which is a 0:22:42.240 --> 0:22:46.640 quarter as toxic as creol. But I mean, you start 0:22:46.680 --> 0:22:50.040 doing that, it's like these little adjustments here or there, 0:22:50.080 --> 0:22:54.959 you start making significant gains and lowering toxicity. The thing is, 0:22:55.240 --> 0:22:59.560 it still is hazardous to your health, depending on how 0:22:59.640 --> 0:23:03.320 you're dis to it and what concentration you're exposed to. 0:23:04.320 --> 0:23:07.480 Yeah, for sure. And obviously a time when you heard 0:23:07.520 --> 0:23:09.280 a lot more about this kind of thing was during, 0:23:09.840 --> 0:23:13.239 like you mentioned earlier, the onset of the pandemic from 0:23:13.320 --> 0:23:18.080 COVID nineteen. People were buying a lot more disinfectant I 0:23:18.119 --> 0:23:21.440 now you said there was a twelve point three increase 0:23:21.480 --> 0:23:24.320 in sales that just dollars wise equates to about four 0:23:24.320 --> 0:23:27.119 billion bucks American bucks. Yeah, so it's a lot of money. 0:23:27.480 --> 0:23:30.639 So you know, obviously with this stuff being used, like 0:23:30.720 --> 0:23:34.920 people were disinfecting everything. The CDC was getting a lot 0:23:34.960 --> 0:23:37.800 more calls about people going to the hospital from poisoning 0:23:38.520 --> 0:23:41.720 just because it's around more. There were plenty of stories 0:23:41.720 --> 0:23:46.320 where people would use disinfectants on like on their food itself, 0:23:47.480 --> 0:23:52.280 putting it on their skin. At one point, former President 0:23:52.320 --> 0:23:56.800 Trump on Live on the Air pondered whether injecting disinfectants 0:23:56.800 --> 0:24:00.280 could cure coronavirus. So there's just a lot out of 0:24:01.440 --> 0:24:04.160 overuse of this kind of stuff at the time because 0:24:04.200 --> 0:24:04.679 of COVID. 0:24:04.920 --> 0:24:07.600 Yeah, and he didn't name check Lysol, he said disinfectants, 0:24:07.640 --> 0:24:10.800 But Lysol and other companies that make disinfectants issue press 0:24:10.840 --> 0:24:15.720 releases basically immediately saying like, don't ingest disinfectants in any way, 0:24:15.720 --> 0:24:18.640 shape or form. They're still toxic. And these companies didn't 0:24:18.640 --> 0:24:21.560 say they're still very toxic. But depending on who you ask, 0:24:22.160 --> 0:24:25.000 they can be pretty toxic. One of the things that 0:24:25.080 --> 0:24:27.760 Lysol did get a boost from though, was remember I 0:24:27.800 --> 0:24:34.960 said that their QAC is almost proprietary, the benzolconium securate, Well, 0:24:34.960 --> 0:24:39.000 it's just different enough from the other versions of that 0:24:39.000 --> 0:24:42.679 that Lysol was able to submit itself its formula to 0:24:42.760 --> 0:24:48.760 the CDC for testing on killing COVID, and the CDC 0:24:48.960 --> 0:24:51.760 was like, all good, So now COVID could be like recommended. 0:24:51.880 --> 0:24:55.840 Lysol is specifically recommended by the CDC for you know, 0:24:56.040 --> 0:24:58.399 the pandemic, and that was one of the things that 0:24:59.080 --> 0:25:03.400 led to Lysol specifically in this huge boom in sales. 0:25:03.720 --> 0:25:06.080 Was a pretty smart little marketing maneuver. 0:25:06.880 --> 0:25:11.320 No, absolutely so a big boon for sales obviously. But 0:25:11.359 --> 0:25:14.320