Episodes

"No, not ball deodorant. We wanted to talk about microplastics. A study came out. It's terrifying. We've known plastics have been terrible for years, obviously turned into some sort of political discourse with straws and everything, but plastics are horrible."

"They are lined with a thin layer of plastic. And unfortunately, when you pour hot liquids, like coffee that are acidic and hot, into these plastic lined cups, they will leach microplastic particles and heavy metals into your drink that you are consuming. So the problem is that we don't break down plastic. So microplastics will break up into nanoplastics. They just keep getting smaller and smaller, but they never really go away."

"Plastics also take decades to decompose. Like, they never truly go away. They just break down into smaller and smaller pieces. And if I remember correctly, these are called microplastics. Right?"

"Oh, because the plastic. Yeah, the micro plastics. I am going to be plastic man. Like, there's nothing. That's why I'm gonna be sick."

"Perspective, pfas for the people that don't know. Yeah. So there are these chemicals in plastics, typically, that I think we could make a safe case for having negative health consequences. Now, they're also found in things like Teflon and fire resistant clothing and things like that. So they show up in other areas, but for most people, the dominant exposure is through drinking water in a plastic bottle or contaminated city water, if you drink it."

"Another area that you have been sounding the alarm on is often these cheaper plastics that many of us are using in our home to both store food in, to microwave food in, and to sometimes even heat stuff up in, which is kind of crazy, right? So talk to us about plastics and what are the top sources of those toxic exposures that come from plastics? Yeah. So it's a big conversation, and I'll say this, that the chemicals that are found in plastics that migrate out from plastics in our food, they're also found in many other places. Right."

"So you go there, you ask any question. So I just did. Are microplastics dangerous for humans? And then it has all these papers, but then you hit synthesize which I think is the credits that you have to buy, but you start with 23 credits and it says, summary, we looked at ten papers. The study suggests microplastics are dangerous for humans and they carry toxic chemicals, contaminating ecosystems and are linked to various health issues, including cancers and immune system disruptions."

"You gotta just be smart. You gotta get rid of all the plastics in your life as best as possible. Don't use plastic storage containers, don't buy stuff in plastic, don't drink stuff in plastic, you know, use glass, use metal, don't heat anything obviously in food or drink in a plastic container. You know, all that's really important. So, you know, there was a new study that was looking at liter water bottles from plastic water and they had 240,000 detectable plastic fragments, 100 times more than previous estimates, which is crazy."

"It causes the immune system to go haywire, increases inflammation. And the cascading effects of that, obviously, can ultimately lead to many of the events that we're mentioning were measured in this set of patients in Italy. So, again, we're just starting to uncover these effects. This concept that microplastics and nanoplastics that are accumulating, let me just say, these plastics are mostly pet, which is what we use to make plastic bottles that we drink water and drinks out of, and pvc or polyvinyl chloride, which is what a lot of our plastic plumbing and piping is made from. And so as little tiny bits of these plastic materials either are exposed to sunlight and break off and end up in our water and food supply, and we consume them, they are slowly accumulating in bodies, and they may be driving inflammatory response, they may be driving adverse health outcomes."

"The plastics only accounted for 10% of the total particles they identified. The rest could be minerals or other types of plastic, or something else entirely in a report. But if the plastic isn't coming from the water bottles themselves, where is it coming from? And the researchers kind of hypothesized that some of the plastics could be shedding from, ironically enough, the filters that are used to filter this supposedly purer water. So we're getting plastic from every different which way up and down the supply chain."

"Yeah, I mean, let me ask you a question about that. So, yeah, you said it ends up kind of in, it ends up in our environment then and even our own bodies, it sounds like. How does it actually impact us in this way? Well, I mean, the thing about plastics, and you think about this, maybe you have a plastic bag that's wound up in your backyard or a kid's toy that is 20 years old and it starts to chip. And so those pieces are microplastics and nanoplastics, and they can break down."

"It's down cycled. It becomes used for something that's much worse, and it just contributes to the overwhelming amount of plastic in our waste chain. Plastic sucks. Plastic is terrible. The goal is to use much less plastic, and the 5% that's recycled to plastic compares to 68% for paper and cardboard."

"Exactly. So I think there's more and more research that shows that we're breathing in microplastics or nanoplastics, that we're ingesting it through our food, through the water we drink, through all sorts of different ways. Also, plastics have a lipophilic quality, so they attract pollutants that we have in our water systems already. So from flame retardants or fertilizers or pesticides, and they bioaccumulate in our bodies. The point of the expedition and of the film, really, is to make people think about what we can all do in different ways."

"Zach. Yeah. You were talking about this earlier. You've brought this up before. Consumer reports found widespread presence of plastics in food."

"You know, if you look at, you know, exposures from that, you know, they have, they just leech a tremendous amount. You know, with wash, with water, it kind of sits there all day. So I think it's a. It's a very, you know, again, most plastic water bottles want the, you know, plastic bottle industry to come after us, but that's a common way for, you know, individuals to get exposed to it. So I think if, again, if we're seeing that's one of the main touch points for plastics is usually through our kind of food and water supply, then, yeah, I think it's easy to get rid of it if you can."

"Did the micro nanoplastics cause this? Did it contribute to it? Well, likely contributed to it, but it could also be an overall toxic lifestyle in addition to all the microplastic exposures together. Yeah, it's so nuts because we literally do not know the extent of the damage of all these different products every year. It seems like we're figuring out something new about how these products can make our body suffer from some of the top killers in the world."

"The microplastic polyvinyl chloride, which we just usually know as vinyl, was in 12.1% of the patients. So polyethylene is probably one of the most common, sort of like, consumer single use plastics, also multi use, because you'll see it in medical tubing and things like that, too. But you definitely see it in takeout containers, like styrofoam containers, things like that. Interestingly, that means then that a whole 41 and some odd percent of these patients didn't have any microplastics detected in their plaques. And it's kind of a sad state of affairs when we're like, that's interesting."

"So fresh on my mind that plastic water bottles are probably a no no. I know. And people think they're doing something good by drinking a water bottle instead of drinking from the tap, but it's like, no, just the plastic that's holding the water is so dangerous. And I even worry about the plastics that are on that you get a metal water bottle that has a plastic lid or, like, a plastic straw, and you're like, I don't know about that. So remains to be seen."

"Are you worried about microplastics? We are mindful of them, yes. Yeah. Like, we. So I built this blueprint food stack where we built a bunch of products."

"And a lot of people answer. A lot of people answer, oh, I have the best water. I only drink bottled water. And I'm like, wait a minute, plastic bottle. You saw the study a few weeks before that where they found that plastic bottles, people are getting 10,000 times the amount of microplastics."