Why you may be eating and drinking more microplastics than you thought

John Yang:

Plastic, it seems is unavoidable in our daily lives, from takeout containers to water bottles and maybe even that tub of ice cream. Two new studies out this week find that we're eating and drinking more plastic than we might have realized.

In one of them for the first time, researchers were able to measure nanoparticles of plastic and bottled water. On average, a liter bottle had 240,000 tiny particles, often smaller than a speck of dust. They can pass through the intestines and lungs directly into the bloodstream and then to other organs.

Another study looked at what we eat. It found microplastic in 88 percent of the tested protein samples, seafood, beef, pork, tofu, they all had it. George Leonard is one of the co-authors of the protein study and his chief scientist at Ocean Conservancy.

George, scientists have known for some time about fish about the because of the water that it's in. But why did you decide to look at other protein and were you surprised by any of your findings?

George Leonard, Chief Scientist, Ocean Conservancy:

Well, we were so an Ocean Conservancy. Of course we care deeply about the ocean and we care deeply about plastic pollution.

So we have been interested in understanding the distribution of plastic in marine life and in particularly in seafood for a long time. But we realized we also eat a lot of seafood. And we're all consumers of all kinds of different foods. So we thought it would be useful to try to put marine data in the context of other proteins that we choose, and we might choose at the grocery store.

So our hypothesis really is that there might be some differences between those that are grown in the ocean, those that have grown on farms, and that are animal products, or maybe some of these new animal substitutes, the meat substitutes that are on the market. And what we found out was, in fact, there are essentially microplastics in all of these protein choices, and that if you are looking to be a protein eater, you really can't avoid microplastic.

John Yang:

I think we can understand in seafood where it comes from comes to the water that they're in. But where does pork and beef, and especially plant based protein like tofu? Where does it come from there?

George Leonard:

Well, so in the ocean plastics, of course, are in the water. And so they are either ingested, or they can come through the gill systems of fish and shellfish. And for terrestrial animals and for plants for that matter. In some respects, it's very similar. So we know there's a lot of microplastic contamination in the soil. And so you can find microplastics that are being essentially taken up by plants, through the root systems from the soil.

And then of course, animals are drinking water that is likely contaminated with microplastics. They're eating a variety of different foodstuffs, which themselves may have plastic in the moment, as well. And then many of the processed proteins and other foods that we're eating may be picking up microplastic from the processing itself.

John Yang:

I know you're not a physician, you're not an epidemiologist, but is there any scientific agreement or understanding of what ingesting a person ingesting this plastic does to them?

George Leonard:

Well, that's true. We're all the authors on our study today are marine biologist by training. But we think that the epidemiological community and the medical profession should be concerned about this as well. And they are, I would say, we are concerned, but we shouldn't be panicking.

We do know that plastics and the various chemicals that are used to produce them. And the chemicals that they can absorb in a natural environment can be delivered into animals. And they have found their way into a variety of organ systems, including in humans, you know, we're finding it in our poop, we're finding it in our bloodstream, we're finding it in other organs in our system.

The real question is, are the kinds of contaminants that are well known in plastics now being delivered at a sufficient dose to actually be a risk to human health? And that's the question that has not yet been answered. But I think is important for all of us to address.

John Yang:

Okay, so we know it's bottled water, it's in sources of protein. If someone wants to minimize this, or avoid it altogether, what can they do?

George Leonard:

Well, you know, you mentioned this bottled water study earlier, which was a fascinating studying in its own right, because they found extremely small plastics, these are called nanoparticles, they're 1,000 times smaller than the kinds of particles that we were sampling in our study, and were found to be, you know, 10 to 100 times more common than we thought for microplastics and bottled water.

And this is really sort of the frontier of new techniques to be able to detect these things that are really at the Nano scale. If you want to avoid them, you know, the question is, what do we do about that, and I think there are some things that individuals can do. But more importantly, at the societal level, we need to reduce our use of plastics. And we need to advance policies to deal with those, that's what we do here at Ocean Conservancy.

But if you're if you're an individual consumer, there's, you know, a couple of things you can do, I think you can use filtered water, you can use glass to store and drink your water from rather than plastic. You can avoid foodstuffs that are wrapped in plastics. I have seen bananas in the store wrapped in plastic, which of course, is completely unnecessary. And there are other ways that you can essentially reduce your use of single use plastics and keep your foodstuffs away from them.

John Yang:

How easy are you finding that if you try to get away from single use plastics? How easy is it?

George Leonard:

Well, it's a challenge. And that's why, you know, we need broad systemic changes to how we, as a society produce, manage, use and dispose of plastics, but you know, it's easier than you think. I remember here in California, where I'm located. We had a big debate a number of years ago about bringing your own, you know, bags to the grocery store so that we wouldn't use single use plastics in the grocery store. It turned out you know, we passed the bill to do away with that, and within a week or so I found myself pretty easily using these bags they become very common.

So there are ways that we can change our individual behavior that can overcome some of these sort of entrenched behaviors I think many of us have.

John Yang:

George Leonard of Ocean Conservancy. Thank you very much.

George Leonard:

Thank you.