You're listening to a CNA podcast. Microplastics, there's a lot of mystery and uncertainty about the science behind these tiny particles that are all around and inside us. How much are we being exposed to in our daily life? What are the health implications and what can we do about it? Today we're looking at a new academic report and checking for plastic in the bloodstream. Hello and welcome to Climate Conversations. I'm Jack Bor. Welcome, Lee Ling Tan, how are you? Hi,
Jack, I'm very well, thank you. I've had 3 cups of coffee, so I'm bouncing off the walls. I can't wait for the weekend. Woohoo! How are you? How are you doing?
3 coffees already. I've had 1, but I see what kind of headspace you're in, it's gonna
be interesting.
Yep, I'm good. Before we get too optimistic, before we look forward to the weekend, we gotta get through this. And we're gonna talk about microplastics. How many of them do you think you have in your body?
Oh, quite a bit. Wasn't there a study some time back that estimated we could be consuming a credit card worth of microplastics a week? That's probably how much microplastics I have in me right now, Jack.
OK. Yeah, I've seen this report. I'm, I'm quite sure it's been widely discredited. And they definitely overestimated how many microplastics we're eating. Yeah, like credit card. That's
a
lot
a week.
That's too much, it's far too much. But still we are eating plastics. Does that concern you? No,
absolutely. It concerns me. It makes me wonder what kind of long term effects that would have on our bodies. But you know, I think we're going to bring in a little bit of a silver lining today, right? There's a new study that shows maybe, just maybe. Our bodies are working to get rid of them. Maybe. What about you? Are you worried?
Silver lining. That doesn't sound like you normally.
It's the coffee. It's the 3 cups of coffee. Yeah, it's made an optimist out of me.
Yeah, I'm kind of worried about the impacts on our general environment on the planet, just the amounts of plastics that are out there. Uh, we'll get into all of that. In a minute, but first up, you can't avoid, in your bloodstream, the quiz. OK. Now, it's another ranking challenge, which we've done a few weeks in a row, but they're so fun. So I'm gonna give you another one of those this. Hey, you've been doing pretty well the
last few times. It's related to microplastics. It's, it's based on an Italian study. That looked at regular fruits and vegetables. I want you to tell me which of these had the highest levels of microplastics contained within them when they were tested during this study. Now we have apples, we have carrots, pears, and lettuce. So 4 fairly common types of foods. Spoiler, like everything we seemingly consume, they all had microplastics inside them.
OK, so apples, carrots, pears, and lettuce, right?
No sound effects for
the last one we had the animals. That was a bit corny. But anyway, I think this is a good one. Let's all have a think and then you know, for our listeners to give them a chance to put answers, their answers in the comment section and then see if you do better than I do when we get to the answers later.
Now for our main story this week, how worried should we be about a rising number of microplastics in our bodies and especially our brains. A new report published in Nature Medicine looked at the issue. The findings are good and bad, and a little nuanced. Over an eight year period, the amount of tiny plastic particles found in examined human brain tissue rose substantially. Looking at the brains of cadavers, the researchers found that
about 0.5% of the mass was plastic. So basically, 99.5% brain, the rest plastic, about the equivalent of a plastic spoon. In your head.
That's giving me the heebie-jeebies. That's wow, 0.5% is a lot.
So these were, these were people at a, at an average age of 40 to 50 years old. The amount of plastics detected were much higher in the brain as well than in the kidneys or the liver. So, any more concerns from you at this point? Do we need to stop again?
Yeah, so that's a lot of plastics taking up space in my system rent-free. But hey, the study also uncovered a little bit of what could be potential silver linings. The research involved autopsies over 8 years and it found that plastic levels did not actually vary much with age, and this suggests that maybe people can expel the material over time, which means that There can be ways to manage this microplastic content inside our bodies, especially in our brains where they seem to be accumulating,
right? And apparently finding plastic deposits in the brain does not prove that they cause damage either, according to an expert from Rutgers University in New Jersey. Um, now, she wasn't actually involved in the study that we're talking about, but she was cited. In a CNN story saying it's not yet clear if these particles are entering and leaving the brain or if they collect in in brain tissues and and promote disease. So definitely more research is needed. Yeah,
and I think what was quite worrying for me too is that the study that we were talking about found that the plastic concentration in the brain samples were 7 to 30 times more than in the liver. And kidney samples and that could be because these lower organs are built to flush stuff out of the system. So yeah, it seems to be accumulating more in the brain.
And I think what was important to also note was that researchers here attributed the rise of the plastics in the body in the brain. Just as a reflection of the plastics in our environment, so there are higher amounts of microplastics detected, but it's only because they've increased at an extreme rate all around us, rather than they're just simply accumulating inside of us. Mhm. So let's, I guess talk about what microplastics really are and why they're out there. OK, Lee, imagine the world.
Can you do that?
Imagine the ocean. I can hear the
waves, the land, the air, and then all the plastic waste that we as humans have created basically everywhere. And the numbers of that beyond our imagination, really, more than 6 billion tons of discarded plastic are out there in the environment. And that might actually be an undercount, there might be much more. And because it takes a plastic bottle, for example, about 450 years to break down, it means that every single piece of plastic ever made,
all those bottles are still out there. If it, if it hasn't been incinerated or turned into something else. Now, all of this plastic is also degrading. It's breaking up into microscopic pieces, it's infiltrating the planet. It's being consumed by animals and fish, and they get absorbed by our food, they enter our water supply and into the atmosphere where we breathe them in. So, not so surprising that we're starting to find more and more microplastics inside our body.
That kind of feels inevitable and also kind of seems irreversible at this stage. Yeah,
I think this study gives us an idea of how bad it is, but the issue with microplastics has been going on for so long. So you talked about accumulating in animals and fish, but A lot of the microplastics in our system also come from other non-animal food sources as well, like fruits and vegetables, even teas and salt, especially, you know, that Himalayan rock salt, that fancy pink salt. Yeah, it's in that, it's in
that and it's in sugar too. And part of that is because industrial discharge goes into. water that then goes into the soil and then the fertilizer that grow our produce. And then there's all that plastic food packaging from cling wrap to bottled water, which is of course one of the worst culprits. A study last year estimated that 1 L contains an average of 240,000 plastic particles. Yummy. And then there are those Styrofoam
boxes as well. I mean, it's also been found in breast milk, so it's really, really Getting into our system in ways we cannot imagine.
And in rice in rice as well. There was a report out of Australia about the plastics in rice. So shock and horror for us.
And yes, that's right, from the University of Queensland if I recall. It was what, 3 to 4 mg of plastic for every 100 g of rice eaten, right? And I think the numbers are even worse for instant rice. Pro tip, guys. Listen up, wash your rice before you cook it, uh, which the study says can cut plastics contamination by 20 to 40%.
Good idea. So what are these microplastics doing to us and our planet? That's the big question, and for now we don't really know, although I think we can assume that none of this is good. What about the solutions then, from a personal consumer point of view, We can't avoid eating and drinking, clearly. Basically, as best as you can, and this might seem really obvious, keep plastic out of the the process. Try not to eat out of plastic, heat your food in plastic or store
it in plastic containers. And then things like our choice of clothing even can have an impact. Natural fibers can reduce your exposure to microplastics as well. And then there's the planet's angle, and there are so many things we could discuss here, and we have discussed in the past. Things from, from waste disposal to alternative materials, reforming the plastic industry worldwide, which countries have been trying to do for years now. Less consumption, public awareness, international treaties.
It's all on the table, I guess, but, but right now the progress is slow, and we're creating and throwing out more plastic now than ever before in history. Alright, it is weather time, Lee Ling, what is on our horizon?
Well, the northeast monsoon season is still upon us, so we can expect wet and windy conditions to stick around for a bit, but it is tapering off. So around these parts here, we expect some thundery showers, but fewer full rain days like we've been seeing. And that's according to the meteorological Service Singapore. Where you're at, Jack, you've been enjoying some cooler weather,
that's mixed with a little, you know, cocktail of air pollution, so that's
that's been fun. Well, I'm sorry to tell you that that coolness may be ebbing, appears to be ebbing as temperatures edge up with highs around 35 degrees in the coming days. It's mild in Hanoi, but rain will persist almost daily in Jakarta. So yeah, a mixed bag of uh weather conditions ahead.
Back to our quiz question. Hope you've had some time to put these in order. Repeating the question. Tell me which of these had the highest levels of microplastics contained within them. We've got apples, carrots, pears, and lettuce.
OK, so remember earlier we talked about the water, the microplastics in the water, microplastics in the soil, and the fertilizer. And because of that, I'm gonna go bottom up. So the vegetables and fruits that you mentioned that grow closer to the ground and carrots, carrots on the ground because they're root vegetables and then closer to the surface, lettuce which grows just above the soil. And then we've got apples and pears, and I'm just, you know, taking a wild guess here because I think
pear trees are taller than apples. So there you go, carrots, lettuce, apples and pears.
OK, well, your your hot streak is over. I have to tell you it's it's over. Uh, you got some of it it's kind of in the right order. In this study, the most contaminated food. Uh, were by far fruits, fruits were able to absorb much more microplastic material than vegetables. So that meant that apples, I think it had something to do with the sugar as well. OK, don't ask me too much about the study, it was very technical. But apples were the highest, recorded
the highest levels of contamination ahead of pears. Carrots were the worst of the vegetables, so that came in at number 3. And then lettuce had, you know, surprisingly, the least amount. So.
Maybe they absorb.
I'm sure that's part of it,
yes. less about proximity than the mechanisms of, yeah, OK.
Go check out the study. It's there online and you can learn about why those fruits and vegetables absorbed plastic like they did. For now, that's the end of this episode of Climate Conversations. As always, we thank you for joining us. Please give us some feedback, come and connect with us on social media. We're there.
And I'm Lee Ling Tan. Thank you for listening in. And we'll hopefully see you back here next week.
Hopefully, the plastics won't have consumed you. Yes, we'll be here
next week.
I'm Jack Board. Thanks as always to the team that put together this podcast, Sai Ye Win, Tiffany Ang, Janai Jahari, and Christina Roberts.