The Excerpt podcast: Specks of plastic are in our bodies and everywhere else, too

On a special episode of The Excerpt podcast: Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic that result when larger pieces are broken down. And they are everywhere. They’re in our oceans and mountains; they’re in our food; they’re in our blood. And now, according to a new study published last month, they’ve even been found in clouds. What’s the impact of these ubiquitous materials on our health and on our environment? And can we do anything to stem the tide of plastic that keeps winding up, well, everywhere? Environmental Health Expert Leigh Shemitz joins The Excerpt podcast to discuss education, cleanups and other tools for fighting against microplastics.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here

Dana Taylor:

Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, December 21st, 2023, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic that result when larger pieces are broken down, and they are everywhere. They're in our oceans and mountains. They're in our food, they're in our blood. And now, according to a new study published last month, they've even been found in clouds. What's the impact of these ubiquitous materials on our health and on our environment? And can we do anything to stem the tide of plastic that keeps winding up, well, everywhere? Here to help me understand this pervasive and intractable issue, I'm joined by Leigh Shemitz, an environmental health expert, and the president of SoundWaters, a coastal education organization that works to promote the wellbeing of Long Island Sound. Leigh, thanks for coming on The Excerpt.

Leigh Shemitz:

Thanks so much, Dana. Happy to be with you.

Dana Taylor:

Okay, so let's dig right in. How did we get to this point? Can you talk us through how these very small plastic materials end up in so many places?

Leigh Shemitz:

So how we got here was that we started making plastic. And one thing to understand about plastic is that it doesn't biodegrade. It stays with us anywhere from 500 to 1000 years to completely degrade. So all the plastic that's been produced since the 20th century is still with us and will be with us for centuries. So that's how we started getting here. And then I think the second thing to understand is the acceleration that we're experiencing now, that while we've been developing plastic for decades and decades, the scale of plastic right now has exploded in recent years.

Dana Taylor:

When did scientists start noticing these microplastics, and has the rate at which they've come into the world increased since then?

Leigh Shemitz:

So the first inklings about microplastic were in the 70s. Researchers in the Sargasso Sea essentially stumbled on them, and the Sargasso Sea is a fairly remote area. So to find plastics out there in the 70s, the first articles were published then. But the scale really is only now coming into clarity because it is so... The scale is so large and it is so ubiquitous.

Dana Taylor:

Then I'm just wondering, how long can these microplastics stay in our bodies and what health concerns and risks are there?

Leigh Shemitz:

Well with really all human health issues and microplastics, there's both a growing sense of the scale and impact and also a lack of clarity because we can't do tests on human beings in terms of what happens. So we're looking at long-term studies and starting to see it. Originally scientists thought that microplastics would pass through the body, and now it's become very clear that is not the case, that they get into the bloodstream. Every single person on the planet has plastic in them. How much is ingested? How much stays is not clear. We don't have a mechanism of testing a human body for how much. Recent studies have suggested it can be as much... You've probably read that, as much as a credit card amount of plastic ingested a day, but there's no clear amount. But it is very clear that plastics can go into the bloodstream and can travel throughout the body, and in fact seem to get fairly heavily deposited in the liver and the colon.

How much and the scale and the impact, not known yet. But as one researcher said, it's really hard to imagine a sentence that starts with we're breathing in the benefits of microplastics in the human body. We know that having plastics and all that they can carry in the human body carries risk. It's just not clear the impact of those risks.

Dana Taylor:

Well then what's the impact on our ecosystems, our oceans, for example?

Leigh Shemitz:

That is easier to gauge because we can see what's happening and also do experiments. And so the scale of microplastics in the water, it is everywhere. So whether it's in the Arctic or Antarctic oceans, right at the edge of Long Island Sound here at the coast of Connecticut. If we scoop up, and we do this with our students every day, Dana, if we do scoop up water and do a simple test with our students, they will find microplastics continually in the water. So it's ubiquitous. Also, larger pieces are found within animals. They can starve an animal. There have been some pretty glaring examples of this because the plastic will fill the stomach, the animal will feel full, they actually starve to death, but they're also finding the toxic impacts on sea creatures is extensive.

Dana Taylor:

Do we know how much of this stuff is out there?

Leigh Shemitz:

We do not know how much of the stuff is out there. We know how much we're producing and we're starting to get a sense of the scale. I think the most recent research is indicating how much now is airborne, because the thing about microplastics in the marine environment where I work is we can in fact filter and see it, but in airborne, and that's becoming more and more clear of how much is airborne and how in remote areas, and then of course the human health impacts airborne means that we are breathing it. And so the potential for human health impacts, and especially in terms of lungs, is something which is getting a lot of attention.

Dana Taylor:

Okay, so Leigh, now that we have a sense of the size of the problem, too big to measure, it sounds like. Let's talk about how we solve it. Are there any effective and scalable ways to fix it?

Leigh Shemitz:

The problem is both fixable and not, it's not in the sense that we have so much plastic existing in the environment, but there are things that we can and people are doing, and one is to, and you've probably heard this, is really, really limit and even eliminate the use of single use plastics. That people are aware of, that's the stuff that the straws, the things that get used once and thrown out, it's we are not going to eliminate the use of plastic in our lives, but we can eliminate the wasteful use of plastic in our lives fairly, fairly dramatically. Another element that we can all do is recycle properly. Recycling is, that's a whole nother subject, but getting it right, doing it well, making sure there's not leakage is important because our recycling numbers are not good. Another aspect which is truly in getting involved in local cleanups, whether you live in the desert or whether you live here by the coast here at SoundWaters, we sponsor constant cleanups.

And one thing that's important for people to understand at the coast is that most of that plastic is not coming from the water. It's coming from the land. After a big rainfall, everything that's on the land ends up through drain pipes and otherwise will get down to the water. So we see at the end of rain, the shoreline will be just ringed with plastic. So there is something, there's also a sense of making a difference in doing things. So cleaning up and getting involved in organizations that do that. And then finally, Dana, I'd say to be fair, it's really not an individually scaled problem. So pushing for legislation to curb plastic production to curb single use is important because the scale of this both can be blunted by individual actions, but also needs much larger scale actions.

Dana Taylor:

So what would it take to significantly reduce the amount of plastics and microplastics, not just the plastics that we are creating, but the plastics that are already there?

Leigh Shemitz:

It's a great question. How do we reduce the microplastics that are already there in a significant way? And there's not a clear answer to that, Dana. This is one of those larger environmental problems which we have not yet solved. So on a regional scale, on a local scale, doing cleanups on an individual scale, eliminating the use of single use plastics, less plastics getting out into the environment, but the microplastics that are now throughout the oceans, whether it's the 5 Gyres, but even more ubiquitous, simply within the water column all around the world that cannot be removed. So learning with current technology, so we are a creative species, we're an innovative species, and we might be able to solve a way out of this, but right now it is not clear that all the plastics can be removed from the natural world. It's a matter of now really of understanding what the impact is and trying to protect species, including our own from the harmful effects.

Dana Taylor:

Are there any places or industries where we've been successful in reducing the supply?

Leigh Shemitz:

There's lot being done in the healthcare field, for example. And of course COVID and the need for a lot of disposable products was problematic for many years, but reducing the single use working in that space has seen a lot of improvement. And of course, keeping a loop within the recycling system so that we don't have materials lost back into the natural world.

Dana Taylor:

What do you think the public most needs to know about this issue and something that perhaps they're not aware of yet?

Leigh Shemitz:

I think one thing people might not be aware of as much is plastic in the air. There's been a lot of wonderful press getting the word out about plastics in the marine environment, about the gyres. And of course we can see it. I think one thing which people do need to be aware of is the fact that plastic is now in the dust, that there's questions of how that's affecting human health. It's actually a question of how it affects climate health data because they might actually be seeding clouds. So in terms of what people can do about that, I think being aware of it and then lessening and reducing how much plastic everyone personally puts out in the world is the biggest thing. And as I said, in getting involved locally in cleanups and activities, that is certainly going to make a difference. The scale, that I can't promise, but it does make a difference.

Dana Taylor:

I want to circle back to, because I can't get my mind off of it now, the idea that I'm consuming a credit card size amount of plastic every day. Is there anything that people can do in their homes, some way to get that out of our systems?

Leigh Shemitz:

So one area that is an easy kind of lever to turn is in reducing how much plastic in terms of cookware. So if you're going to be microwaving last night's leftovers for dinner tonight, using a glass container as opposed to a plastic container would be a very good step in the right direction.

Dana Taylor:

All right, Leigh, thank you so much for being on the show and joining us.

Leigh Shemitz:

Thank you, Dana.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producer Shannon Rae Green for production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcast@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening, I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.