Transcription
You've sort of touched on them a few times, but just do a rundown for me of the most common places that people are getting exposed to the highest levels of microplastics.
Yeah. So, the the most I would say common places, one is drinking out of bottled water, like bottled plastic bottles, right? Like a lot of people drink out of plastic bottles. Um, that would be a big source. Tap water that's unfiltered. So, tap water again also has microplastics. Unfortunately, our oceans are contaminated. So, microlastics are also found in a lot of fish and particularly they accumulate in the digestive tract of fish. So, if you're eating shellfish or clams or oysters or anything where you're eating the whole digestive tract or sardine, whole sardine, then you're going to be getting microlastics.
Heat is a big big one. Okay, that I would say that is one of the main, you know, culprits when you're combining that with plastic. So, a lot of your to- go coffees that you're drinking from Starbucks, Starbucks, anything like that is going that is a huge one because you're you're you know, there's been studies looking at BPA leeching into liquid when it's when heat like boiling water is applied. It increases increases the leeching by 55 times. Which is huge. It also increases microplastic, you know, breakdown, right? Because you're breaking down the plastic.
Not only are you getting more, you're making the plastic smaller, which allows it to be permeating through the gut more effectively.
Exactly. Exactly. I can't tell you how many like to- go coffees I've had in my life. And you know, another big source now, this is like new coming out. I mean, this there's been a couple of studies that have come out on this is tea bags. because you're adding hot water to tea and the tea bags themselves are made of either um polyropylene, they're made of nylon or they're made of interestingly cellulose which you would think wouldn't have microplastics but I think they they must be mixed there must be a mixture of stuff in there and there's this new study came out you know really just a couple of months ago showing that you can get anywhere between millions to billions of microplastic particles per milliliter I mean per milliliter.
How many how much is that compared with the normal sort of that's a that's a large
a lot.
Okay.
It's a lot. What I'm getting at is you know I you there's not that I I think what's happening is the the the heat is breaking the plastic down. These tea bags are made of plastic and so um you know consuming these tea bags again when you're getting to go tea it's like I I now I'm like all I can think about is like I'm consuming a plastic tea.
Yeah.
But you have to remember there's a lot of studies at least with green tea showing that green tea has huge benefits for cognition. It it delays dementia.
Might even offset the microplastics you've had to consume.
Yeah. Yeah. So I mean clearly people are drinking tea out of probably tea bags. So it's not like at least with green tea it seems like there's some there's some benefits, right? But um so so those are some of the major sources. Um and then there's also it's in our salt. Um and then air, right? So like that that's another one if you're living in a polluted place. If you're again, you know, internally venting your dryer, dryer ventilation in your house, that's a another major source.
And then another one would be also to consider would be black plastic. So, I know you're like, "What?"
This is this is kind of some new data coming out.
Black plastic is often made from recycled electronics.
And
you mean bits of plastic that are black.
I mean black utensils like your black spatula or black plastic, you know, forks and knives or your your black plastic lid on a coffee to go coffee cup. Black sushi the bottom of a sushi container. bottom of like a rotisserie chicken. If you've ever bought a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, that black, right? Black plastic. It's often made from recycled electronics. And recycled electronics often have chemicals in them that are added to prevent fires from starting like they don't electronics starting fires. So, they add these brominated flame retardants, which are carcinogenic. They are not supposed to be in food. They're not they're not you don't suck on your electronic. that's supposed to go in your mouth, right? So, these um black these black plastics have very high levels of carcinogens that are normally not even found in regular plastics that we're, you know, in in things that we're consuming. And there was a study out of the University of Plymouth that found black utensils, black toys for babies, you know, they're putting in their mouth, they contain between 30 to 40 times the safe limit of these brominated flame retardants and other carcinogens and endocrine disruptors in them than than safe.
Mhm.
So, um that's another sort of And think about it if you're buying like a rotisserie chicken or like you get a to- go fur or whatever soup and it's in like a black container, you got the heat. That's the added factor on top of that, right? So, that's another major source.
What about dermal stuff?
Yes. Um so, again, we mentioned the phalates, right? Um which are in personal hygiene products. And that's something I do want to mention because you might think, "Oh, I'm looking at the ingredient list and there's no phalate on there." But there's two different chemicals that are very, very sneaky cuz they mean there's phalates and they're in a lot of personal hygiene products. One is fragrance. If the word fragrance is in the ingredients list, that means there's phalates. And perfume, not perfume, but perfume. That is another chemical that means there stalates. So you really want to look for phalate free personal hygiene products. Again, very important especially for um people that are considering conceiving because those are the chemicals that are associated with the sexual you disrupting sexual development in boys.
[snorts]
And then the other one is receipts. And this is a really big one because maybe not for you and I, right? Receipts are they're thermal paper. And so essentially they're coated with BPA because there's a thermal reaction that happens when heat is applied to the BPA. It prints it prints text on the receipt without actual ink.
Mh.
So that's how it works. And if you ever see like a white coating on the receipt like that that's BPA. So the BPA in like plastics at least is kind of contained in a plastic matrix like this is just
it's purposefully liberated.
Yes.
Exactly. It's it's like free-for-all on the receipt. And um so there's studies looking at people that handle a lot of receipts. The other like when I was in the airport
stuff and stuff like that.
Yeah. I was in the airport on coming coming here and you know I the the guy that was like handling the receipt he's like do you want the receipt? I'm like no. And I saw him take it out and put it in the trash and like I thought about there's this huge line of people.
You're doing that 500 times a day.
Exactly. And I looked at the guy and I was like I was like, "Hey dude, you know, I just want to tell you that these receipts are lined with endocrine disruptors that disrupt hormones." And he goes, "You [clears throat] mean
wish somebody had recorded this?" Oh my god. This lady who's going through the airport. I met this lady earlier on today and she started ranting and raving about the receipts. Said it's sort of covered in this magic dust that's killing me or something like that.
I couldn't I couldn't help myself. I felt like I like I couldn't not say something, right? Right? And he looks at me, he goes, "You mean like testosterone?" I was like, "Yes, testosterone. It's been show it's been correlated with a decrease in testosterone." I was like, "You need to wear nitro gloves." So, bottom line is BPA um it's lined on the receipts. Uh nitro gloves can stop people from absorbing it. So, people that are like, you know, basically any kind of cashier, anyone that's handling a receipt multiple times a day, highly recommend they wear nitro gloves. Latex doesn't do that. Also, if you wear cream or um hand sanitizer, it it's been shown to increase the dermal absorption of BPA by a hundfold. off.
[laughter]
Some people are like, I don't want to get my hands on the
I don't want to get co or whatever, right? How many
100x
100x absorption? Think about how how many times these reg I've seen I've seen them do it, you know, and then they touch the receipt. So I think I think this is like something that is not really talked about and here I am worried about my like one-time exposure. So you know for people out there it's like yeah you can opt for career of working in Target or something like that.
So the first time that I ever learned about receipts uh you won't know who this is but Owen Schroyer who is Alex Jones's sort of second in command. I went for dinner with him when I first moved to Austin like forever ago. It was him and a bunch of other people. There was a couple of girls at the table with us as well just downtown in Austin. The receipt came out. I was like, "Oh, this I'm sort of new here. I'll I'll get the mail. That'd be like nice. It'd be a nice thing for me to do." So, I did it. And as I'm going to get the receipt out, one of the girls that sat around the table like hits my hand away. I'm like, "What?" She's like, "What are you doing?" As if I was about to walk out into open traffic. I'm like, I was going to going to take the receipt and I was going to put the tip on. She's like, "Are you crazy? You going to touch that?" I'm like, so it kind of does show that the fringe insight from three years ago, some of that stuff ends up being a bullseye and sort of percolates around. Now, I'm not saying that all of it is, but some of the stuff ends up being legit,
right?
It is. It's definitely legit and it is a concern particularly for people that are handling them daily multip multiple times a day.