>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Well, our connection this hour is made with something that you probably can't see with your eyes alone, but they are just about everywhere.

Microplastics are in our water.

Sometimes in our food.

We are increasingly concerned about what they might be doing in our bodies.

Spend enough time on TikTok and you will find some very strange videos about how microplastics can affect your masculinity.

And yet, with so much focus on microplastics in recent years, there are plenty of mysteries unsolved here.

How exactly do they get into the environment?

What harm can they do to us?

How easily do they get into our bodies and stay there?

Local researchers are proud to say that Rochester has become a hotspot for research on microplastics and health.

And this week, Rochester is welcoming researchers from across the country to discuss emerging research challenges and next steps at their Great Lakes Microplastics Research Symposium.

They're expecting around 150 people to attend.

They have a lot of work to do.

If you've ever wondered about that plastic soda bottle, if that's causing you harm, you're not alone.

If you wonder about the effects of plastic and sporting equipment, cooking utensils, toys for children.

There are people who are trying to learn what's going on, what's a risk versus what is truly safe.

And we're going to try to dig into all of that and answer your questions if you've got them.

By the way, on microplastics this hour, let me first welcome the co-directors of the Lake Ontario MicroPlastics Center on the far side.

Dr.

Christy Tyler is with us.

Christy is professor of environmental science in the Thomas H. Gosnell School of Life Sciences at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Welcome to the program.

Thanks for being here.

>> Thanks for having me.

>> And doctor Katrina Katrina Korfmacher easy for me to say.

Professor of Environmental Medicine and public Health Sciences at the University of Rochester.

Welcome back to the program.

Glad to be here.

Across the table.

Hello to Jamie Roussie James.

Dr.

Roussie is chief scientific officer and co-founder of SiMPore.

James, welcome.

Thanks for being with us.

Thank you for the opportunity.

And James, what is SiMPore?

Briefly.

>> The company is called SiMPore silicon membranes with pores.

So we make filters.

And in this case the filters are very useful for collecting and identifying microplastics.

>> Very good.

And next to Jamie is this Assemblymember Jen Lunsford from district number 135.

Welcome back to the program.

>> Always happy to be back.

>> So there's a lot to discuss here.

And I, I just want to start with a kind of a definitional question because, you know, I was showing the guests that I went to the break room right before the show and I got a balanced break.

And here it is.

I thought, well, this is good.

I'm just getting little almonds and little cranberries.

And of course, it comes in this little plastic container and Christy am I looking at like this plastic?

>> It is plastic.

>> Are there microplastics associated with this?

Like, do they end up on my hands?

My fingers?

>> I mean, probably yes.

Yeah.

I mean my plastic, as soon as it's produced begins to degrade and break down and break off into the little bits that we call microplastic, which is really any plastic that's between one micron.

So very, very tiny up to five millimeters.

And it's really just kind of an operational definition of a little bit of plastic.

>> Up to five millimeters.

That's the largest.

>> That's where we, we generally see the cut off.

After that, we get into meso plastic or microplastic.

So that container that you just held up is a microplastic.

>> Jerry Seinfeld once said that everything in the world is just on a timeline of its way to becoming garbage.

And I understand that.

I mean, it's probably true.

So here we are.

If I pick up a piece of plastic and there is microplastics associated with it, do I need to be worried about that?

I mean, like, I think there it's easy to start convincing yourself to be a hypochondriac about microplastics.

>> We need to be aware of the fact that those are plastics.

I mean, that's a food grade plastic.

So we, you know, ideally there's fewer additives, but all plastics are synthetic compounds usually made from petrochemicals.

And there are many, many different kinds of polymers.

So that one is probably polyethylene, which is a type of plastic.

But there are many other kinds of polymers.

And then to give them their functionality, we add different kinds of additives.

So plasticizers or dyes, titanium dioxide makes plastics white.

So all of those different chemicals, some of which we already know can be harmful to human health, are incorporated into the plastic.

So as soon as you discard that, so that, you know, as on its way to becoming becomes actual garbage very quick.

Yes.

Right.

You use it.

You had your snack.

Uh, it's becoming trash right away.

And then it's degrading.

If that were to get in the water and in the sunlight, it makes it break down more quickly into little pieces of plastic.

And all of those chemicals leach out.

So when we talk about plastic, it's really both the physical material.

So these little particles and then all of the chemicals that are embedded within it that can leach out into the environment.

>> All right.

So one other question for Christine.

We're going to go around the table here because all of our guests have different sort of levels of expertise on this.

And listeners, if you've got questions on microplastics, um, guests may have answers or they might be able to offer some insight into your questions.

It's 844295 talk.

That's toll free ( 844)295-8255.

You can email the program as always.

The email address is connections@wxxi.org.

If you're watching on the WXXI News YouTube channel, you can join the chat there.

Do we do you feel, uh, doctor Tyler like we have any sense of where the real thresholds are for harm yet?

And are we better at that than 510 years ago, or are we going to be better in 5 or 10 years from now to understanding this?

Like, where are we on the continuum of actually understanding microplastics in our body?

>> So we are on the way to understanding that, uh, it's a very, very difficult question because, you know, as I mentioned before, it's not just one thing.

So there's many, many kinds of plastics.

And so it's trying to get a handle on every kind of plastic and every kind of additive in plastics is pretty challenging.

Uh, but we know more than we did ten years ago for sure.

Uh, and ten years from now, I think we will have a much better idea of what the potential harms are to us.

>> I already I already have two email questions.

And the first one I'm going to direct to Assemblymember.

Lunsford.

Harry.

Harry wants to know why isn't there a law requiring plastics recycling?

So, I mean, I don't know how much the law can do with this.

It's a fair question, though, because people here in recent years about, well, the international markets for plastics have changed and you can't recycle everything.

You used to be able to recycle.

You want to weigh in on what the law can say or not say about that.

>> Sure.

So plastics recycling is a law that typically would be promulgated by your local municipality that controls more of what your regulations are with regard to waste pickup.

You know, many of our municipalities either contract here locally for waste pickup in other cities.

It might be provided municipally, and there are some places where you are required to recycle plastic.

But the reality is, is that you can't recycle every kind of plastic.

And even places like Monroe County, where we have a pretty robust recycling program, you can't recycle every kind of recyclable plastic simply because we don't have the right technology.

I think a lot of people don't realize how much of a ceiling your infrastructure places on what you can and cannot recycle.

Like even if we have, say, I think black plastic is a great example of this black plastic that you get in food containers frequently gets sorted, uh, incorrectly with the optic scanners on a lot of municipal recycling equipment, simply because the conveyor belt is also black.

And that is a limiter.

I mean, it's the thermo forms, your berry containers, your clamshells.

In Monroe County, we don't have the technology.

We don't have the machine to recycle that.

But in other counties we do.

So that's a big limiter and financial investment in infrastructure to recycle the plastics we can recycle is really the better use, I think, of government resources and effort to just bring everyone to the same level of, uh, ability to recycle what we can.

And this is obviously a huge issue here because we are home to high acres.

We are home to the second largest landfill in the state.

So this is an issue we hear about a lot.

>> And it's a fair question from Harry.

I mean, I get it, and I do appreciate that, Harry.

It's connections@wxxi.org.

David, we'll get to your question coming up here.

He's got a water filtering question, and I think that'll relate to some of what we're going to talk about coming up here.

So hang tight there, David.

Um, Katrina Korfmacher if is there a question or two that you say right now as a researcher, we don't fully know the answer to this, but I think that we will.

I remember talking to astrophysicist Adam Frank and he said, as someone who does research into biosignatures and looking for life in the stars, he said, we'll probably never know if we're alone in the universe, which is like a big question, of course.

But he said, just based on time and distance and everything involved, we probably will never actually get an answer.

And that's hard for him as a researcher to say, I'm going to work on this my whole life and we'll probably never get one.

We probably never, ever will.

You have a chance to get a lot of answers with the work that you and your colleagues are doing?

What are some questions that you really look forward to saying?

I think we can know this, and I don't know if that's even far away.

>> I think we're going to have a good idea about how some mechanisms that some kinds of plastics affect us at the cellular level and connecting that to the bigger questions of, so what do we do about it?

That's going to be the tricky part.

So we'll have a better sense of what kinds of plastics are getting into the environment, what kinds of plastics get into our bodies.

That I think the tricky part is going to be connecting those two things, the things that are coming into our bodies, we've got a pretty good sense of where they're coming from, what they may be made out of, and we have some ideas about how plastics in biological systems act.

But connecting those two things.

For example, is it most important what is in your water or in the air you breathe or in the food you eat, which you know?

We know that we're getting microplastics in our bodies from all those sources, but figuring out which are most important and what to do about it, I think that's going to be the really tricky part.

>> But what we should be able to get answers on that you think eventually.

>> I think we're going to be able to get directional answers about that, but it's going to be, yeah, that's going to be the tough part.

>> And then when you talk about what comes next here, again.

Assemblymember Lunsford people will turn to, well, once we get more concrete evidence here about how plastics look, let's just hypothetically talk about the way microplastics may be harming, causing harm, or causing harm in children.

There will be pushes for regulation, but there will probably also be lobbying against is there ever lobbying against regulations?

>> What?

I've never heard of such a thing.

Um, you know, one of the most controversial, one of the most lobbied bills this cycle was what was formerly called extended producer responsibility and is now called Prea.

The Packaging Infrastructure Reduction Act.

>> Which would do.

>> What that would limit the what goes into our packaging.

It deals with the front side of our waste issue.

So it would incentivize private industry.

Who makes packaging to make more of their packaging recyclable, to reduce the amount of plastics that they use.

It would roll out over time.

Uh, greater and greater limitations to give people time to meet those goals.

And it would create monetary penalties for not meeting those goals.

Uh, this is a bill that is heavily advocated against, in large part by the advanced recycling community, who are the plastics people, the chemical society, the organizations in the plastics industry that want us to more overtly, uh, bless advanced recycling as a practice, you know, a common misconception that is promulgated by those who oppose this bill is that it bans advanced recycling in New York, which it absolutely does not.

It's silent on advanced recycling.

What they want is us to affirmatively bless it.

And the reality is, is that a lot of advanced recycling is very nascent in its, uh, development.

Most advanced recycling centers that exist in the country couldn't get a permit to operate in New York because of the air pollution that they would generate.

And there's a lot of questions around the efficacy.

It's in many cases, what is called advanced recycling is really just a form of incineration.

Uh, I'm not saying we can't get there, but we're certainly not there today.

And that is one of the bigger pushes against these bills that would, I think, more overtly address the creation of plastic on the front end, which is, I think, a lot of what we control at the state level.

>> And so this bill called Prea did not pass.

>> It did not it has been around since 2001 in various forms.

It has changed as it changed sponsor hands.

And to the best of my knowledge, I do not believe it has ever passed either house, but it was briefly included in the governor's budget in 22, but fell out.

Uh, and it keeps getting close.

We keep like we've had.

>> Do you support it?

>> I do, I was actually the first co-prime, uh, co-sponsor when it was put out in 21.

It was one of the first bills I co-sponsored.

>> Okay.

So 25 years in still hasn't passed, but some momentum for it.

>> Oh, enormous amounts of momentum every year.

It almost gets there.

It almost gets there.

We keep putting it on our, uh, Earth Day agenda and then it falls apart.

It often sits with the bottle bill.

Um, so it's one of those things that we are, uh, always pushing for.

There's been a lot of amendments to it to address concerns, to make things more explicit.

Uh, and the sponsor for that, bill, Deborah Glick, who is a long time very well respected legislators retiring this year.

She took it from retiring legislator Steve Englebright.

So who carries that bill into the future is now in flux as well.

>> Okay.

All right.

Something to follow there.

Are you confident, Dr.

Korfmacher?

I mean, certainly your work as a researcher, you don't do the policies.

You talk to policy.

You work with policy makers.

But your job is to try to get some research done that will give us a better, clearer picture.

And then maybe the policy makers and the public will demand action.

Are you confident that things can and would change once we get better information on microplastics?

>> Yeah, I was just looking back at my notes from when you were kind enough to have us on the show two years ago, when our center was first funded, and I remember saying then that until we get answers to some of these questions, it's going to be really hard to develop the will, political will to address them.

Jen's just indicated there's a lot of political will, and we have more evidence, if not all the answers.

We're starting to see some policy action at the local level, at the state level and the federal level.

And so now the question is what to do.

And we're in a position to help make sure that those steps that we take are effective and doing what we want them to do, efficient in a cost effective way, and equitable so that they are, um, you know, affecting people fairly to, to do that, we are going to need the private sector and government and the researchers to all work together in new ways.

>> Well, hear from the private sector.

Dr.

James Roussie is chief scientific officer and co-founder of SiMPore.

And you heard Jamie tell you a little bit about what SiMPore does.

Jamie, can you tell us why, as we talk about trying to measure microplastics and we say NPS, that's micro and nanoplastics, right?

>> That's correct.

Yeah.

Micro Nanoplastics.

>> I'll use microplastics as a shorthand, but I mean, if we're trying to measure it, why is it so difficult in the first place?

>> Yeah, it really relates to the ways in which microplastics are measured.

So there's two fundamental ways you present the microplastics to an instrument.

The instrument shines light on the microplastics, and the light that bounces off tells you something about what the microplastic is made of.

And so things that are small reflect poor small amounts of light.

So it's harder and harder to get the information back, to tell you it's made of polyethylene or polystyrene or this or that other plastic.

The other way in which things are, are measured is you heat the sample up, you heat the microplastics up until it falls apart with the heat.

And then you look at the pieces that that have come off of that.

And you try to sort of put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

And if these parts came off of a certain kind of plastic, you'd be able to identify the, the, the whole from the parts.

And some of the listeners may have seen there was a lot of popular discussion.

There was a prominent piece in the Guardian where some of those, those heat related methods were put into question, particularly around measuring microplastics in the brain.

And there was a big discussion in the in the literature there, and it came out in the public press just earlier this year.

>> What do we know, Jamie, about microplastics in the brain right now?

>> Yeah.

So so the I think the question is, um, not if they're there or not.

It seems likely that that they are there.

Um it's how much.

And so you asked the question earlier, will we know something more in ten years than we do now.

I think one of the questions we'll have answered is um are methods for measuring microplastics will have gotten better and we'll be able to determine, you know, is this a microplastic?

Is it a piece of tissue?

Is it a little bit of a cell.

Things like this, we'll be able to resolve those questions.

And um, a lot of the work that the federal government, the NIH and other federal agencies are sponsoring now is moving that direction, improving methods so we can understand what's a plastic, how are measurements?

Um, methods are getting affected by the tissue or water or the place from which they came.

>> Well Dr.

Roussie, I'm going to try to ask you a question that I wonder if other listeners like me who are not in your field would have.

And I should preface this by saying, you know, I was a decent student growing up.

I got one D in my life and it was in chemistry my senior year of high school.

Now, in my defense, I was a senior in high school.

Looking forward to the future.

All the transcripts were in.

You know, I didn't give Mrs.

Massie AG my best effort, and she was very kind to me.

But I struggled in science.

So this is a question that I apologize.

Jamie, is a little bit, you know, maybe basic, but I genuinely wondering if you take a sample and there is there are microplastics that come from different sources.

Are you able to break it down and say, well, X amount of this came from plastic water bottles.

X amount of this came from a different plastic.

This came from a clam shell container.

I mean, how granular can you get in identifying sources?

>> Sure.

And my colleague here, Dr.

Tyler, would be able to comment on that as well.

But um, generally it's easy for us to say one type of plastic over another, you know, polystyrene, polystyrene, propylene, whatever, you know, pick your type of plastic.

That's pretty easy to say.

But because of the myriad ways in which plastics are made, dyes, additives, all those extra things that go in, um, it's hard to pinpoint, you know, the source, the exact source from which it came.

Um, I don't know what you would say to add on that.

Dr.

Tyler.

>> I agree exactly with what you're saying that we can we can say, yes, this is a piece of polyethylene, but it probably has changed so much since it was in its original form.

Maybe it started out as a yogurt container, but it is broken down into little tiny pieces.

It has leached out chemicals or while it's in the environment, it might have bacteria grow on the surface of it or other toxic chemicals that are already in the environment attached to the surface of it.

The shape has changed.

So it's very, very difficult to backtrack.

We do see polypropylene and polyethylene are the two most commonly produced materials.

So we see a lot of that in the environment.

We see them in biological samples.

We see them at the bottom of Lake Ontario, but we see other materials to things like acrylic or polyvinyl chloride.

And so we can also be tracing those back.

So it's it's really a big puzzle.

And some of it is the shape, you know, we see in the lake, uh, our recent data shows that maybe 70% of the particles we find in the lake are fibers.

And a lot of that is most likely from textiles, like clothing.

>> Can I read an email on that subject here?

So this, this is exactly, I think, um, what Marsha writes about here.

She says, uh, thanks for this important program on microplastics.

Evan, you mentioned microplastics in water and food, but they also appear in the air and soil, which is one reason they reach the water and our food.

Perhaps more important, however, are the plastics that are included in modern clothing.

Most 21st century American clothing includes polyester, spandex, nylon and other synthetics.

These are created as thin threads of extruded plastics, and they will never biodegrade, but simply break down into smaller and smaller nanoplastics, which can enter our bodies more efficiently.

I'm concerned about the REJ, u ju ju ju facility, currently slated to open in the Rochester area to recycle clothing.

Given the prevalence of synthetics in clothing, it is likely that the area will see an increase in nanoplastics in our air and water.

Not to mention the fact that recycled fabric sheds microplastics more readily than do virgin synthetics.

Would you please ask your guests to discuss these concerns?

And thanks for a wonderful program.

I'm going to go around the table.

Let me start with, uh, with Dr.

Tyler on that.

What do you.

>> I think everyone's looking at me because this is a Jen Lunsford question.

Okay.

Well, um.

>> Assemblymember Lunsford the floor is yours.

>> So first off, I do want to give a shout out to my colleague Anna Kellis, who is an assembly member in Ithaca who did pass a bill at the Assembly this year, didn't make it through the Senate to require our, um, washing machines to include a filtration system to help reduce the loss of microfibers into our water system.

Since washing machines is, as far as we know.

Now, the number one way that these fibers are finding their way into our water system.

But to get to the issue of reissue, reissue is a well respected international company that is opening its first North American branch here in Rochester.

And they recycle 100% polyester.

Enough polyester has already been created to clothe the entire world seven times.

We don't need new polyester where good and.

>> People making new polyester.

>> They are, they are.

And, uh, as we look at textile recycling methods, that is another thing that is both, uh, you know, when you deal with organic cotton, we have a decent methodology around that.

Polyester has a methodology.

When we talk about our Franken fabrics, the blends that's more challenging.

Uh, but reissue, does this work all around the world in the EU, where there are far more regulations than there are here?

And I am confident that this is going to be a net gain from an environmental perspective and exciting to have here in Monroe County, where we're going to be able to become a hub of textile recycling.

Uh, to the extent that it is, technologically possible.

Uh, but I do understand the concerns here and appropriate filtration systems and monitoring and creating, uh, a framework around what we're looking for is all part of the expansion of this industry.

And I think that's another place where both the state and county governments can be more involved.

From a regulatory perspective.

>> What is the timeline for reissue to get going here?

>> Oh, I think it's about three years now.

Um, they they've received some economic development funding.

They're working very closely with our goodwill.

I don't know if people are aware how spectacular our local goodwill is.

They are also a textile recycling hub.

Uh, we were able to just from our office give them funding to buy a textile shredder so that they can do more shredding on site.

Uh, this is my plug for the goodwill.

If you have clothes and you think, I don't know if this is donated or not, you bring them to them and they will sort it.

They want everything, and if they can recycle it, they will.

So please bring all your stuff.

Um, okay.

>> Um, so let me ask the co-directors of the Lake Ontario MicroPlastics Center.

So Marsha's concern is that, um, among a number of concerns, when clothing or textile gets recycled, the more it gets recycled, the more easily it breaks down and breaks down and breaks down some more.

And that this is not biodegradable.

You know, I think that we, a lot of us grew up with this idea of biodegrading just means like it vanishes into like the perfect ether, like, oh, it's gone now.

And she's saying it's not gone.

It's just more and more nano and more and more accessible to your body or easier to enter your body.

So, uh, Dr.

Tyler, what would you say to Marcia?

>> Um, I think they're all really good points, and I think that, yes, it will continue to break down into smaller and smaller and smaller pieces until we get to the nano range over the very long term.

You know, we're talking tens to hundreds of years.

Plastic will break down.

It will break down into carbon and oxygen and hydrogen that it's made of bacteria.

Some bacteria can decompose it.

So it will break down, but it takes a long time.

And there is evidence showing that the smaller the particle, the more easily it crosses barriers in your body.

And fibers are are particularly concerning because they are made really tiny in one dimension.

You know, the diameter of a typical polyester fiber is about 14 microns.

So it's very, very tiny.

And so if it gets in that angle, it can cross these barriers because it's this long, skinny thing that can enter your body.

>> So again, crossing barriers within your body for people who might be thinking, well, it's micro or nano plastics, but the body will flush them out of your systems.

Your body will sort of clean itself out.

You're talking about something that could have staying power in your body.

Yes.

>> It could have staying power.

And, and we don't really know enough about the body's ability to expel plastic once it's in there.

It's a foreign body.

Uh, you know, it's this particle that is your body's not adapted to dealing with one of our researchers is showing that your body's natural immune system, the macrophages, will engulf plastics.

But what that ends up doing, his early work is showing is that it basically slows down those macrophages, so that then the immune system is tied up.

And busy, and it can't respond to other immune attacks.

So it's busy dealing with this foreign particle.

Uh, and can't respond when you actually are exposed to a pathogen.

So we're learning a lot about how these particles might be affecting us.

And we don't know how we get rid of them.

>> And then you want to add here, Dr.

Korfmacher.

>> I just think Jen's example and the raise you question goes to the two themes.

That made me so excited to talk with you about this issue right now.

One is the connection between upstream and downstream.

Yes.

I think we can all agree.

There's a lot of plastic out there, and we probably need to figure out a way to have less of it, capture it better, recycle it better.

That's really important.

And at the same time, we need to be thinking downstream of how does it get into the environment and what does it do?

And this is a great example.

Second theme of how government and private sector and researchers can be working together locally, that the private sector is creating this facility.

We're developing technologies to help us measure.

Government is supporting these efforts.

And we have researchers who could help answer those questions that Marsha has, because we don't have standards for how to measure those plastics.

How much is too much?

But somebody should be keeping an eye on that and looking at trends over time so that we're in a good position to answer her question down the road.

>> Dr.

Roussie, anything to add on this?

>> Yeah, to two things.

So one, it would be interesting to see, you know, the difference between, um, the sources coming from a recycling plant versus all the washer and dryer from that same region.

Right.

I would guess, and this is entirely speculative guess that the washers and dryers collectively are much larger source than one plant.

Um, and back to your earlier question, you know, if, if we look in the environment.

Um, Evan, and try to figure out where something came from, like work all the way back to the source, um, in specific instances that is happening.

So there have been lawsuits where environmental groups have been joined by their state Environmental conservation office or the like, uh, for particular entities who've released a particular type of plastic into the local water.

And in both of the cases, one in Texas, one in Pennsylvania as a part of the, the order, the settlement, these facilities have been mandated to monitor their local water sources for the particular type of plastic coming from the plant, or so on.

So that is happening in certain cases.

And it's interesting that on the state level, environmental action groups and their, their, uh, environmental conservation offices or the like are joining forces to enforce these unfortunate events.

Um, one case would be there was a plastic factory that released all of its nurdles, all the starting materials for their plastic production into the Ohio River.

And they're now being forced to monitor for that.

>> I mean, presumably an accident or an.

Okay.

Yes.

Okay.

>> You're not negligence.

>> Okay.

Negligence.

Okay.

No.

Very interesting.

Um, if you are waiting on the phone or you've sent emails.

So Robert in Fairport will take your call after we take this break.

We've got emails to share a lot of questions, and we're going to talk more about what is happening this week in Rochester.

It was a couple of years ago that the co-directors of the Lake Ontario MicroPlastics Center were telling us about what they wanted to do in this research field, and they are already doing quite a lot.

They're welcoming colleagues from around the country this week in Rochester, and we're going to come back and we'll answer more of your questions on microplastics.

Coming up in our second hour, there's a new book on comedy from the National Comedy Center and the Smithsonian.

The book is called Funny Stuff How Comedy Shaped American History.

It asks what kinds of comedy routines or bits or sketches or shows have staying power and why?

Why comedy affects us and how it affects us as Americans.

We'll talk about it next hour.

>> Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Mary Cariola, center, proud supporter of Connections with Evan Dawson.

Believing an informed and engaged community is a connected one, Mary cariola.org.

>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson Tom writes to say what a fantastic show.

I have a 1 p.m.

Tea time and I'm almost ready to cancel just to keep listening.

Thank goodness for podcast Connections making golfers late for their tee times everywhere.

Glad to do that Tom.

Thank you and it is great information.

Our guests are bringing you a lot here.

Let me grab Robert in Fairport on the phone.

Hey, Robert.

Go ahead.

>> Yeah.

Thanks for, uh, thanks for taking my call.

Um, I think that it's kind of a fantasy to think that we can recycle our way out of this, especially for plastic packaging.

If you look at countries like Japan, they incinerate most of their plastic packaging and create energy.

Uh, they have incineration to energy plants.

I think that's probably a smarter way to do things because they lack the landfill space for plastic.

So I think that's got to be part of the equation.

>> Okay, Robert.

Thank you.

So first of all, let me just ask everybody if they want to win.

His first premise is we can't just recycle our way out of things.

Assemblymember did I see you nodding along with that point?

You agree with that?

>> Yes.

Obviously, not only do we not have the technology or the, uh, infrastructure, even the technology exists in all parts.

We would need it.

We don't have the market for it.

There's I mean, you'd be surprised.

What is unrecyclable that people take for granted?

Uh, so.

Agreed.

We cannot recycle our way out of.

>> It every time we have the team from Monroe County on this program.

Mike Garland and his outstanding team, we are flooded with questions.

And frankly, a lot of surprise from listeners who go, wait a second, I've been throwing this in the blue bin here, and I can't, you know, I mean, your your strawberry fruit containers here.

Driscoll's probably makes enough money without you.

Now I'm in trouble.

Do not sue me.

I don't want to get sued by Driscoll's.

I'm sure they're lovely people.

Um, I'm going to stop talking.

Are you a lawyer?

Do you know any good lawyers?

>> I know a couple, okay, not me.

>> But to your point.

To your point, whether it's a Driscoll's container or many others, I think a lot of people assume it's plastic.

It can be recycled.

>> And there's been it's glass.

You can't recycle green wine bottles.

Like people think like that's blowing people's mind.

>> Yeah.

Jamie, you're nodding along.

Anything you want to add there?

>> Oh, I've seen local wineries since there's, you know, many of them in our Finger Lakes region.

They crush their bottles and line their paths with them as a way to recycle them.

>> Um, and so Katrina and Christy, you want to weigh in on somewhere?

Robert is saying he's looking at Japan and incineration.

Uh, Katrina anything you want to add to that point there?

>> Yeah, definitely.

It's got to be more than recycling and all of, I think we're going to need all of these strategies for figuring out what plastics do we need?

What can we avoid?

What do we need to incinerate and what can we capture better?

And hopefully our recycling will also be improving at the same time.

So that, um, those questions won't be as difficult in the future.

>> Christy.

>> Yeah, I agree with everything everyone said and and want to add that I think we need better products.

You know, the packaging needs to be designed with end of life or recycling in mind.

So getting your berries in a container that's huge, or your lettuce that you can't recycle is it's so wasteful.

And if we had a better package that was already designed with the ability to reuse or refill or recycle, we wouldn't be in such a bind.

>> You know, if I could add to that, I think also people focus on recycling, but you know, composting and reusing, that's also part of this process here.

And, you know, a great example going back to textiles, a lot of the uses for, uh, down cycled organic cotton isn't to make new cotton fiber.

We it is crushed up into shoddy into fill, and we stuff furniture with it.

We use it as insulation, you know, finding other ways to use it that not just extends its life, but keeps it out of the waste cycle where we see a lot of contaminants, find their ways into places they shouldn't be.

If we can find other uses that contain those materials, we also reduce the impact on the environment.

>> Uh, a couple questions on water filters.

So David from Ovid said, uh, I wonder if it might be recommended to install a home carbon and Ro water filtration system.

What's the Ro do we know.?

>> Reverse osmosis.

>> Oh, reverse osmosis.

Okay.

And so and then maybe related here is from, uh, Susan.

She says, when I put my Monroe County water through my Brita filter, I'm guessing that I'm adding microplastics.

Should I stop?

So let's work backwards.

Let's get Susan's first here.

Should I stop putting Monroe County water through a Brita filter?

AM I adding microplastics?

Do we know enough about that?

>> This sounds like a Jamie question to me.

>> Yeah, thanks.

Um, so so there's a couple ways to, to think about this.

Um, so our colleagues at the University of Rochester actually surveyed water from all the way from Hemlock Lake through a particular drinking fountain on the University of Rochester campus.

This is a published paper.

Anyone can go find it.

It's an open access paper.

And you can see that when stuff left the plant, it was very clean.

The the plant did a very good job at removing almost all particulates, and it picked up things like rust and sand and glass and lime and so on.

But it also picked up microplastics on the way.

And, um, the, the, the drinking fountain on the third floor of a particular building in the campus, which had a point of use filter, much like the Brita did a very good job of removing the microplastics from that filter.

Um, we've published similar work.

There's a, there's a little app note, a little white paper on the SiMPore website where you can go see similar data from the point of use filters.

They do a pretty good job at removing microplastics.

>> And Jamie, how do you get your water at home?

What do you do?

>> So, um, you know, something's better than nothing.

I installed a point of entry carbon water filter.

You know, the line comes into my house, it goes through a filter before before it goes to the rest of the house.

Something's better than nothing.

I still there's still plastic pipes between where that filter is and where water comes out my tap.

>> Okay.

Um, anything to add?

>> I just am grinning because I, I love that study.

It was modest.

It was small.

It was practical.

Like, let's just take water samples all the way down the line.

And we learned so much from it.

And it was only possible because we had this local expertise in the kinds of methodologies that were needed.

And we've come a long way even since then.

We had researchers who were willing to structure and sort of run the analyzes, and we had a partnership with the City of Rochester that said, yeah, you can sample our water all along.

And in fact, somebody from the City of Rochester Water Department is a coauthor on that paper, along with some of Jamie's colleagues and U of R. And that's the kind of model I think we're going to need going forward.

>> And what's the interesting finding is it was the point of use that was more, let's say, problematic, more microplastics in the water than when it left the plant.

You know, the feet of sand and coal that the water goes through in the plant are very effective means for removing microplastics, it seems.

But it's that point of entry and where things, you know, get got picked up from, from the starting point to the end.

>> And so Jamie, for David and Ovid, who was asking about reverse osmosis, uh, what would you say to him?

>> Yeah.

So something's better than nothing.

But, um, we've actually looked at water coming through.

Groundwater reclamation facilities that use reverse osmosis filters to clean up the water and then put it back in the ground.

Um, we've found evidence that those filters are shedding fibers into the water.

They're putting back into the ground.

So it's it's a catch 22, right?

Something's better than nothing.

But again, it can contribute some to the problem.

>> David.

Thank you.

Oh my goodness.

So many emails come in.

Let me just get as many as we can.

Bridget says thank you for today's topic.

What are the speakers thoughts on recycling artificial turf?

This is a hot topic locally.

I saw some kind of a reaction from Christy, especially on this.

Uh, is this something you've thought about?

>> I haven't thought as much about the recycling part of it as much as on the whether we should be installing artificial turf in the first place.

>> And should we be.

>> It would be nice to think about alternatives.

I know it's a. I live, I live in Brighton and this is a very.

>> This is a big debate.

>> Controversial topic right now, uh, with our the athletic fields on our campus.

>> So what do you tell as a Brighton resident?

What are you telling the superintendent?

What are you telling the athletic department to say, hey, look, all we've got these teams and they wait all year to play.

And then when they're on grass and dirt, they get rained out.

But we can drain 20in of rain an hour on these artificial turf fields.

We could have a hurricane and they could still play, and we can at least get more games in.

And it's, you know, it's a million, million and a half dollars, but we can do it.

What do you say to them.

>> That there are trade offs.

I mean, we we trade the ability to play, uh, more often.

And I agree that that's a problem.

My son plays soccer.

Uh, and it's muddy.

Uh, but there we are, trading for the potential to run off all of that, uh, stormwater into the creek.

Buckland Creek is right running through the campus.

The all of the turf and all of the, the fill, which is rubber.

Uh, it needs to be replaced periodically.

That runs off with it.

And there is evidence that those chemicals are not harmless.

You know, there are studies that have come out that show that soccer goalies have higher rates of cancer because they spend so much time in the turf.

Um, and when my son comes home and dumps turf out of his shoes.

>> Yeah, you can see it.

It's the little black bits.

>> Concerning.

Uh, so I think, you know, Europe has banned the installation of new turf fields.

Um, and that there is development of alternatives.

>> Are there alternatives?

Are there artificial alternatives that drain water better that let kids play more but don't have.

The rubber or other materials that are diced up that are causing these problems?

>> There are the development of those kind of alternatives.

Cork is one cork.

>> So.

So why aren't we using that?

>> It's expensive.

>> More expensive than the current expensive.

So it's it's a money thing.

Okay.

All right.

Anything you want to add here?

Katrina.

>> And just thinking about the you asked as a Brighton parent.

Right.

And six of the nine long pipes are either recent past current or future Brighton um sports athlete parents.

And um we're also researchers and we can wear those different hats at different times.

And as researchers, we can give information about the chemicals that are in those products.

The evidence for how much it's getting into the ecosystem.

But we can't make the value trade offs if people care more about the heat, about the, you know, being able to play longer about the runoff.

Um, you know, those are value based decisions.

And if asked, we can talk about what we know, but we can't make a decision about what the right action should be at this time.

But however, the excitement about this is promoting nationally, right?

As in Europe, these have been banned while they're developing alternatives.

And there's more and more enthusiasm and pressure on the industry to be more transparent and develop alternatives that address those different concerns.

>> Just briefly here for the kids who do come home and they they turn out their baseball socks, they turn out their sock, their soccer socks and their cleats, and they do have the little black bits that came from the turf.

Is there a better way than just tracking those into the house?

Should you I mean, should you literally bang out your socks and cleats into a sealed garbage?

I mean, is there I don't know, I'm just wondering if there's a better way.

Would you advise that this is probably not a very scientific question.

The researchers are like, this is.

>> I mean, if they could keep it on the field, we wouldn't have to refill it as often and it would keep it out of my car.

Like this is very triggering.

So you've seen it.

I am both a soccer and a football mom, and I'm sitting here like having an emotion about this entire conversation.

But I mean, even like when we're talking about non turf fields, we have to get our schools to stop using pesticides on all these fields.

Like that's the problem with trying to be environmentally and health conscious is there's nowhere to turn.

There's trade offs.

There's no perfect answer.

And people drive themselves crazy trying to find the, the neutral or the least damaging way they can participate in something.

And it's just different trade offs, good and good here and bad there, bad here and good there.

>> It's one of the things I love about this example is that because we have a national network of researchers and research centers, we're not doing the applied research that, you know, we're doing basic research that might answer parts of the questions.

But we have colleagues at Mount Sinai who have a funded grant to look at alternatives in partnership with communities that try to balance what are the different kinds of concerns they have.

And we've been able to connect them with people here who have those kinds of questions.

>> That's probably the Brighton story.

Is the whole thing on a different day, I think, because I know there's a lot of questions.

I know there's a lot of emotion.

Uh, Jim wants to know, does the ethylene vinyl acetate in a dentek dental guard break down and then get ingested?

And if so, are the effects on bodies known?

Uh, Jamie.

>> I have a personal experience with this.

Of course I do.

I just got I just got fitted for a nightguard.

Uh, and I said to my dentist, so, and he says to me, you know, you're going to wear some wear away some of this acrylic and your teeth are going to shape it.

And I said, so I'm going to make microplastics and swallow them.

And he looked at me and said, uh, yeah, I guess so.

Right?

The first time he sort of thought about it.

Um, and you know, that is likely the case that you're going to grind off some of that acrylic and you're going to ingest it.

Um, what it does to you.

I don't have an answer.

I don't know if anyone.

>> I literally just talked to my dentist about this two days ago.

You may be surprised to learn also a teeth grinder.

I don't know if that surprises people that I don't relax.

Well, yeah, but.

Type A, I went to my dentist and I was like, this looks bad.

And she's like, yeah, no, that's what it does.

Uh, and you should be able to keep this for another ten years or so, but they're coming out with resin that because of this concern that they are developing resins that are more, um, durable to deal with this exact question.

So the industry is starting to respond.

And like, I just passed a bill, uh, right at the end of session dealing with PFAs in playground surfacing.

And one of the questions that came up was, what are the alternatives?

But sometimes you have to start passing these bills and creating these regulations to force the market to adjust.

Like the, the alternatives exist, but they're not being produced in large enough quantities to make them affordable because the demand isn't there.

By creating the limitations, you create the demand that feeds the market, that makes it more affordable because they're making more.

It's a whole circle.

Indeed.

>> Yeah.

>> Katrina the, uh, Mouthguards are a great example of thinking about what is it that we care about with plastics and how do we measure them?

So the chemicals that go into the plastic that make that malleable, so it can fit your, your mouth?

I think there's pretty good evidence that some of those those chemicals are endocrine disrupting chemicals.

And if you swallow them into your body, you're exposed to them.

And that's not good.

We don't know if the particles that come off those the microplastics themselves are so large that they just pass through you.

If they glom on other harmful things as they go, if they release those chemicals or not, that's those are the kinds of trade offs that we don't know about.

But the fear and the ick factor has us so focused on these devices that we could just make without those chemicals.

And maybe they aren't a problem.

Those are the sorts of things we're trying to figure out so that we don't devote our resources and our attention on things that aren't making a huge difference for health.

>> Well said.

Well, on that subject here, you've got a lot of your colleagues coming in this week.

You've got a big symposium here.

Um, let me ask both of you and Katrina.

I'll start with you.

What are you most excited about this week?

What's the work going to going to be this week?

>> I'm most excited that we got funding from both the NSF and the NIH, which in this time is particularly in moving to bring 15 trainees in from all over the country who are passionate about studying microplastics.

And that's a really exciting part that we didn't Expect to have 150 people coming for a symposium, and those trainees and oh, 8 or 9 speakers from around the country are going to get together the day before to geek out on measuring microplastics and try to grapple with some of the issues that we've been skirting around here.

So those are some of the things that excite me most.

>> All of that is really exciting.

I'm very excited about the workshop that we have on Wednesday, which is on measuring microplastics, because I think, as Jamie alluded to, they're really, really hard to measure.

And as our concern for the impacts of smaller and smaller particles go, we don't have the ability to measure those yet.

And so sitting together with all of these people, especially these new trainees who are all using different methods in their labs, will be really, really productive and hopefully get us on the pathway to having the tools that we need to be able to measure these particles.

>> Just briefly, Jamie, will we be able to measure smaller and smaller as time goes on?

>> Indeed we will be.

Um, there is a recent federal announcement from the Advanced Research for Projects Agency for health that that challenged everyone to measure down to 100 nanometer Nanoplastics so that's, um, that's like a really big virus sized Nanoplastic.

Okay.

And the technology is, is probably in its prototype stage to do that.

And, um, I've seen some folks who are indeed getting measurement capabilities down to that, that level.

So, um, it seems like the science is going that way.

Um, where the question remains is again, is telling what's a nanoplastic from a piece of the tissue from which it came or some other thing, you know, that's, that's kind of the, the, the debate in the field right now.

>> Rick emails to say, Evan, please let your guests know that they're balanced and nuanced responses to listener questions is really appreciated.

Jen Lunsford statement that there are trade offs as we make decisions is certainly a more candid response than we typically hear from politicians, and I appreciate it.

It's weird to hear you described as candid.

Rick.

Thank you for that.

This, uh, this next question I'm going to keep trying to squeeze.

We got two minutes left here.

I don't know the name here, but this person says, uh, Evan, I reuse my plastic water bottle to avoid filling the landfill with plastic.

Much of the recycle stream is actually landfilled and wasting petrochemicals on plastic production.

So what is my microplastic risk with this behavior in reusing my plastic water bottle?

Is that behavior recommended or not?

Christy I hate to.

Jamie, you want to hit this first?

>> Yeah, I would suggest, uh, you know, there's some very nice metal alternatives.

>> Okay.

>> It's probably a good day.

And the reason is, the more you crinkle that water bottle, the more mechanical forces you're putting on.

It sheds particles back to, I think, the first point that opened our discussion.

>> Right.

And probably if someone is getting a plastic or getting a bottle for reuse, it's not for a month, it's not for a year.

It could be years.

So to Jamie's point, you know, there's probably a lot of crinkling and grabbing and pressure.

So Christy metal better.

What would you say.?

>> Metal is absolutely better.

And I would definitely advise against using the water bottles that are intended to be single use.

Don't reuse those because they're not intended to be durable.

Uh, the caps shed particles.

There's lots of studies that have shown that that bottled water has more microplastics than tap water.

>> Okay.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Katrina.

>> Well, you can see that as we're doing this research and we say we don't have the answers, we're doing our best to offer the judgment based on what we see and communicate with the public.

So I have one other part of the event on Thursday.

I'm super excited about, which is that the teaching artists at the Memorial Art Gallery are joining the scientists in the atrium at from 530 to 730, so the public can come and make plastic art, learn from the scientists.

And this is so important because people are getting excited.

But that knee jerk reaction of, we just need to measure it and bend it.

And our water is not that simple.

>> That's Thursday.

It's a big week with the symposium and these events going on.

Um, and if you've got something, we'll link in our show notes so you can learn more about what's happening both with the research and with the event that Katrina just talked about.

I did not get through the emails.

There were YouTube comments.

Nobody likes Keurig.

Keurig is getting a lot of hate.

And on YouTube there, uh, Jamie's nodding along to that.

Uh, I, I'm sorry I couldn't get through everything this hour, but that just means that we really are going to ask the co-directors to come back and join us.

The co-directors of the Lake Ontario MicroPlastics Center tremendous interest in what Katrina Korfmacher and Christy Tyler are doing there.

Thank you both for being here.

>> Thanks for having us.

>> Thanks for these answers here.

And, uh, James Roussie James is a chief scientific officer and co-founder of SiMPore.

Thank you for being here.

>> No.

>> My pleasure.

Assemblymember.

Jen Lunsford.

Thank you as always.

>> Always a good time.

>> More Connections coming up in a moment.

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>> Manuscripts or scripts.

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>> Just want to make sure you're in the.

I wanted to do it Erfan Kamal.

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Wednesday, June 24th at 530 at Warner Castle.

Registration online at landmark society.org slash.