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Speaker 1: But a world first study has revealed exposure to chemicals

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Speaker 1: found in common plastics is associated with increased health risk

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Speaker 1: throughout the entire human life cycle. Really concerning the review

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Speaker 1: finding plastic chemicals of impact spanning birth outcomes, child development,

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Speaker 1: reproductive health, nutrition and metabolic systems, and new finding strengthening

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Speaker 1: calls for domestic and international efforts to regulate plastics, including

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Speaker 1: the ongoing negotiation of a Global Plastic Treaty. The findings

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Speaker 1: you'd have to say are a red flag and highlight

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Speaker 1: the need for urgent action. Let's have a chat with

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Speaker 1: the head of Plastics and Human Health at the Mindarou Foundation,

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Speaker 1: Professor Sarah Dunlap. Sarah, good morning, Good morning. It is

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Speaker 1: certainly really concerning. How far advanced is the thinking on

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Speaker 1: this in terms of doing something to try and reverse

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Speaker 1: the situation we're in.

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Speaker 2: That's such a good question. I think there are two

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Speaker 2: approaches that we can take. The first is something called

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Speaker 2: the Global Plastics Treaty. That's the United Nations bringing to

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Speaker 2: action and back in twenty twenty two, one hundred and

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Speaker 2: eighty countries unanimously agreed to count with a treaty to

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Speaker 2: end plastic pollution. We've had a whole series of meetings

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Speaker 2: between then and now, and it's crunch time because at

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Speaker 2: the end of November the final treaty will be negotiated.

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Speaker 2: And what we want to be able to do in

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Speaker 2: that treaty is do two main things. One put a

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Speaker 2: cap on plastic production. We've already got eight billion metric

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Speaker 2: tons of stuff on the planet. At least only ten

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Speaker 2: percent is recycle The rest is waste, and industry's plan

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Speaker 2: B is to produce even more as we pivot away

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Speaker 2: from using fossil fuels for energy, to make even more plastics.

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Speaker 2: So we need to rain this in. Recycling isn't going

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Speaker 2: to be the answer because only about ten percent gets recycled.

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Speaker 2: The second element is to really understand that plastic isn't

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Speaker 2: an inert sort of material. It contains. It takes about

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Speaker 2: sixteen thousand chemicals are used to make plastic. We know

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Speaker 2: they get out of the plastic, they get into us

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Speaker 2: because we can measure them in humans. So within that treaty,

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Speaker 2: we want comprehensive regulation of chemicals that are used in plastic.

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Speaker 2: We also want transparency so that we know what's in plastic.

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Speaker 2: We don't know that we're not told at the moment,

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Speaker 2: and I think the regulation is really key and we

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Speaker 2: have to do that so that industry has certainty about

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Speaker 2: the products that they are producing being space before they're

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Speaker 2: release to market, and when you and I go into

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Speaker 2: a shop, we've got confidence that the products that we

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Speaker 2: are buying are actually space. There's a lot of work

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Speaker 2: to do, but we think that this review will really

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Speaker 2: highlight the impact of these chemicals on human health.

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Speaker 1: Do we think do we understand really the risk of

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Speaker 1: disease and death? Do we properly understand it?

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Speaker 2: That is a very good question. What we've got here

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Speaker 2: is a very very clear signal at a statistically significant

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Speaker 2: level ninety five percent for links between these exposures and

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Speaker 2: harm to human health. Now we're also beginning to understand

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Speaker 2: mechanism of how that exposure then leads to the health outcome.

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Speaker 2: It's true to say that many of the diseases that

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Speaker 2: we're seeing, so obesity, diabetes, autism, and as such like,

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Speaker 2: are increasing far faster than can be explained by genetics

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Speaker 2: or known lifestyle factors. It has to be environmental pollution

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Speaker 2: and industrial chemicals including plastics are one of them. So

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Speaker 2: what we do in human studies is we do epidemiological

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Speaker 2: studies and we look at exposure and health outcome, and

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Speaker 2: this is what we're seeing is very consistent evidence across

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Speaker 2: the lifespan for a subset of those sixteen thousand chemicals.

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Speaker 2: They like the canary in the cage. Now, if you

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Speaker 2: want to drill down even further, you have to start

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Speaker 2: doing experiments. And as far as I'm aware, it's not

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Speaker 2: legal to actually give toxic chemicals to the humans and

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Speaker 2: then find out right what happen it's having, But we

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Speaker 2: are doing that every day in one big, massive, uncontrolled experiment.

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Speaker 2: So at the moment, this is where we've got and

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Speaker 2: the evidence is very consistent and it's very concerning. We're

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Speaker 2: also doing work to look more closely at course, we're

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Speaker 2: doing a chlinical trial called the PERSE trial Plastic exposure

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Speaker 2: reduction transforms health, So then instead of giving people toxic chemicals,

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Speaker 2: we're trying to reduce them and see if that's improves health.

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Speaker 2: That child is starting recruitment now, so it will give

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Speaker 2: us direct evidence about causality. And you might have heard

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Speaker 2: about a paper that came out last week from the

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Speaker 2: Florian Institute that was funded by MINDARU on exposure to

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Speaker 2: something called BPA, which I'm sure you've heard about, and

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Speaker 2: risk of autism, And there they were able also to

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Speaker 2: look at mechanism and look at genetic susceptibility which seems

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Speaker 2: to be playing out in boys, and the fact that

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Speaker 2: BPA exposure disrupts metabolism of testosterone and that then influences

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Speaker 2: brain development, and that plays out as a health outcome

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Speaker 2: with increased risk and significant increase I of huge effexercises

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Speaker 2: three times respector by the age of three and six

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Speaker 2: times by the ade of nine. So we're getting very close.

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Speaker 2: You know, we're getting mechanism now, and there's causal inference

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Speaker 2: because science has got much smarter. The only thing I

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Speaker 2: need to say is that at the moment, science is

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Speaker 2: only able to look at one chemical at a time

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Speaker 2: and one hell's outcome at a time. But in reality,

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Speaker 2: we're exposed to mixtures and we really don't know yet

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Speaker 2: what that is. So that's one black box and the

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Speaker 2: other black box have already mentioned, which is what's actually

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Speaker 2: happening inside us. But science is getting into the sort

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Speaker 2: of big data phase where we can crunch through bass

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Speaker 2: amounts of data and start looking at passways in ourselves

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Speaker 2: that are impacted by these sorts of chemicals.

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Speaker 1: So are we at risk then from is it minute

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Speaker 1: particles that we're most concerned about in food space?

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Speaker 2: Okay you've raised Okay, you've raised such an important question,

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Speaker 2: and thank you for giving the opportunity to clarify this.

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Speaker 2: So when you think of plastic, you need to think

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Speaker 2: of this amazing material which has transformed our lives. But

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Speaker 2: there are two issues with it which are problematic, very problematic.

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Speaker 2: One is that it breaks up into smaller and smaller

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Speaker 2: micro and nanoplastics. We're beginning to learn they're getting into us.

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Speaker 2: It needs a lot more work in validation, but we

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Speaker 2: don't know how to measure them accurately yet, so you

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Speaker 2: can't do the human epidemiological studies to compare high and

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Speaker 2: low and explosions and see if that's link to health.

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Speaker 2: The other problem with plastic is when it's made. I've

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Speaker 2: said there are about sixteen thousand chemicals used to make it,

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Speaker 2: and we have to add chemicals or chemicals added so

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Speaker 2: plasticizers to make it flexible, flame retardants to stop it

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Speaker 2: bursting into flame, UV stabilizers and the such like to

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Speaker 2: stop it breaking up in sunlight. Now The problem with

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Speaker 2: those chemicals, and those are the ones, those are the

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Speaker 2: ones that we looked at in our study, is that

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Speaker 2: they leak out, they looped out, they migrate out of

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Speaker 2: the plastic products. That's how they get into us. So

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Speaker 2: the particles will also carry those chemicals. But this study

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Speaker 2: only was able to look at the chemicals that have

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Speaker 2: leaped out and got into us. And with fact when

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Speaker 2: we looked we did look for the studies on micronanoplastics,

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Speaker 2: but there aren't any yet for the reasons I've stated,

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Speaker 2: because we just measure them properly.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So then I suppose from what you've just said,

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Speaker 1: and my question was going to lead to whether it

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Speaker 1: was the microplastics or whether any consumption of say a

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Speaker 1: bottle of a plastic bottle of water, whether we're drinking

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Speaker 1: the chemicals as a result of that, is that the.

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Speaker 2: Result we probably are and the inside of drink cans

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Speaker 2: aligned with resins polymer resins for example, made of something

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Speaker 2: called BPA. I don't want to. I mean, we've got

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Speaker 2: we've always got enough to worry about, we've got climate change,

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Speaker 2: diversity loss, and we don't want anyone to just roll

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Speaker 2: over and say out it's too hard, but we have

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Speaker 2: to do something. We've got real threats. In fact, industrial

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Speaker 2: chemicals are being produced far faster, far fast, new ones,

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Speaker 2: far faster than we have the capacity to identify what's

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Speaker 2: out there because industry doesn't tell us what they're producing

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Speaker 2: and be secondly to assess what kind of impact they're having.

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Speaker 2: So the there's all sorts of exposure routes and we

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Speaker 2: weren't able to look at individual products that we have

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Speaker 2: two black We've got the black box of so we

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Speaker 2: start with the exposure in humans. We know what the

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Speaker 2: exposure is because we can measure it, and we know

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Speaker 2: what the healthcare come is because we can measure it.

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Speaker 2: And as I've said, these are very very.

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Speaker 1: Consistent finding somebody's run through. Well, we've been chatting. Do

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Speaker 1: you know about BPA on paper receipts. It's similar shiny

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Speaker 1: coating Apparently, Yes.

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Speaker 2: Yes it is, and that was a surprise to me.

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Speaker 2: When I'm now asked do I want to receipt I

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Speaker 2: tend to say no. It's also apparently with some classic

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Speaker 2: associated chemicals are also in the the plastic protector covers

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Speaker 2: on our signs, you know, and you've got to ask

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Speaker 2: for how much of this stuff is actually getting out

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Speaker 2: and impacting us and the truth because I think I've

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Speaker 2: already mentioned these molecules. These chemicals work at extremely low

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Speaker 2: level parts per billions BPA has been recently the horrible

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Speaker 2: daily intake, which is what humans are supposed to be

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Speaker 2: able to intake every day without to human health. It's

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Speaker 2: one point two nanogram the killer gramd body weight. That's

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Speaker 2: around parts of billions. So think of a tea spoonal

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Speaker 2: check a couple of Olympic signs symbols, and you might say, well,

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Speaker 2: what what is that doing to me? Well, what it's

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Speaker 2: It's acting at the same sort of concentrations as hormones

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Speaker 2: do in our body, and these chemicals are hormone hackers.

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Speaker 2: They disrupt our hormone system, our endocrime system, which is

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Speaker 2: a whole extraordinary, exquisitely orchestrated series of mechanisms where our

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Speaker 2: bodies grow, our brains, dessert, where we feel heat or cold,

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Speaker 2: how we metabolize. So we've got this exposure coming in

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Speaker 2: on top of the normally very well orchestrated sequence of events,

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Speaker 2: and it's disrupting it.

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Speaker 1: Very low concentration, not a positive outcome, but I'm.

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Speaker 2: Eternally optimistic because we actually do not we know what

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Speaker 2: to do. And I'm going to cite the whole in

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Speaker 2: the ozone layer as a sort of playbook. But there

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Speaker 2: is the world came together. And the first thing is

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Speaker 2: that people humans a species could actually see the problem.

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Speaker 2: They could easily see the hole in the ozone layer.

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Speaker 2: We need to see the problem as plastic incredibly useful,

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Speaker 2: but it could be death by a thousand.

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Speaker 1: Conveniences, indeed amazing.

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Speaker 2: The second ingredient is that people understood that the whole

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Speaker 2: in the ozone layer is going to be harmful to

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Speaker 2: their health, so cancer scheme, cancer, and also blindness. The

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Speaker 2: third thing was that industry could see the writing on

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Speaker 2: the wall and that they were accountable, and it was

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Speaker 2: the industry that stepped in and came up with alternatives

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Speaker 2: to the CFCs. Now we're not there yet. The whole

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Speaker 2: is mended, I understand by about twenty five percent, because

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Speaker 2: we've got to keep pushing. Other things are happening and

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Speaker 2: we need the same sort of approach with plastics. We

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Speaker 2: need the same of approach with climate change and biodiversity loss.

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Speaker 2: And it's all in the linked you know, we're living

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Speaker 2: beyond the capacity of this planet to support us, and

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Speaker 2: we have to look after it.

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Speaker 1: Professor, thank you for your time, my pleasure, Matthew Sarah Dunlop,

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Speaker 1: Head of Plastics and Human Health at the Mindaru Foundation