Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. My name is Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: how much plastic is in your life? Like? How much?
Speaker 1: How many plastic things did you encounter, say just this morning,
Speaker 1: just this morning? I didn't count, but I thought about it,
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, if I were to just try
Speaker 1: to live a plastic free existence, I would say that
Speaker 1: about seventy of everything that I touched that was surrounding
Speaker 1: me would just disappear, and I'd be left with like
Speaker 1: a shell of my house and like, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: one last item a glass you Yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I was. I was looking around myself, and it's pretty
Speaker 1: startling because like even like now, since I'm using a kindle,
Speaker 1: it's like I'm reading on plastic. I'm I'm certainly we're
Speaker 1: doing all this research and writing on plastic for the
Speaker 1: most part. Occasionally we have an actual book thrown in
Speaker 1: there um or some printouts that came from a machine
Speaker 1: that was made out of plastic, but they're plastic is
Speaker 1: just all over my work life and then my my hobbies.
Speaker 1: I'm like you know if I if I'm painting, at
Speaker 1: least do these little migment miniatures that I paint were
Speaker 1: made out of metal? But now it's cheaper to do
Speaker 1: them out of high grade resins, So they're they're made
Speaker 1: out of plastic. Um. The cats they're pooping into plastic boxes,
Speaker 1: they're eating out of plastic. I'm eating out of plastic um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there are sometimes glass. I do use glass for
Speaker 1: the food. But but still you go and you buy
Speaker 1: plastic and everything, but you know, everything's like wrapped in
Speaker 1: three different sulfane wrappers. You're not careful, and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just everywhere. I mean even your clothing. To write,
Speaker 1: there are certain types of polyester um, and we think
Speaker 1: of polyester is being like really seventies thing, but that
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is that there are types
Speaker 1: of polyesters that are really lightweight that you wouldn't even
Speaker 1: know um are in your clothing. That's plastic, plastic components
Speaker 1: in otherwise metal looking objects. I mean, how much of
Speaker 1: our our vehicles are filled with plastics? Earphones plastic, the
Speaker 1: earbuds we stick inside of our bodies are made out
Speaker 1: of plastic. Surgical implants of various kinds are made out
Speaker 1: of it. We store everything in it, we we lie
Speaker 1: down to sleep in it. If you have one of
Speaker 1: those those cool race car beds. Um we have. We
Speaker 1: have remade our world into a plastic line. We protect
Speaker 1: ourselves with it. Teflon if you wuning teflon, that's plastic,
Speaker 1: also used to store like many volatile substances like acids,
Speaker 1: um as well. I mean, it's it's everywhere. And uh
Speaker 1: and the really amazing part too for me, because you know,
Speaker 1: we're stuff to blow your mind, so we really you know,
Speaker 1: we want to focus on that that mind blowing aspect
Speaker 1: of any topic we cover, and certainly plastics may not
Speaker 1: sound that exciting, but think about it. It's something that
Speaker 1: you know, you go back a couple of centuries and
Speaker 1: uh and and there wasn't plastic everywhere. We were having
Speaker 1: to depend on other materials. And now plastic completely envelops us,
Speaker 1: completely surrounds us, and there's no turning back. It's a
Speaker 1: huge innovation. Uh. There's a lot that is actually democratizing
Speaker 1: about it. We'll talk about that later. Uh, but of
Speaker 1: course there are some drawbacks to it, and it's sort
Speaker 1: of one of those things that once you have this technology,
Speaker 1: and you open Pandora's Box. It's not like you're gonna
Speaker 1: go backwards and say, you know what, let's just start
Speaker 1: putting milk into the glass and jukes again. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can start doing it on a you can try on
Speaker 1: a local level. And certainly i'd look to hear from
Speaker 1: anyone who has given up plastic completely, um because because
Speaker 1: again that would be it's more of an effort than
Speaker 1: you would think. And you're wearing moccasin's right now, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: even her shoewear would be affected. So I mean, it's
Speaker 1: but certainly on a larger level, on a cultural level,
Speaker 1: it's just impossible to go back these substances that we've
Speaker 1: we've taken. It's like, like you said, it's like a
Speaker 1: Pandora's box. It's like it's like a magical genie has
Speaker 1: given us a gift, and then we just side we
Speaker 1: might want to take it off, and we realize it's
Speaker 1: fused with our skin and in some cases, all right, well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the ubiquity of plastic. In terms of
Speaker 1: some statistics. It turns out that we make one and
Speaker 1: fifteen million metric tons a year, the equivalent of the
Speaker 1: weight of three hundred and forty seven Empire state buildings,
Speaker 1: and ten per cent of that makes its way to
Speaker 1: the sea. And what gets to the sea has been
Speaker 1: tossed off by ships and oil rigs, and the rest
Speaker 1: comes from floods and sewage. Yeah. Yeah. And then of
Speaker 1: course that plastic winds up wrapped around sea animals or
Speaker 1: or in their bellies more off the not or just
Speaker 1: floating in giant heaps on the surface and the beaches. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and which is nothing is more depressing, by the way
Speaker 1: than walking down a stretch of beach and looking out
Speaker 1: at the horizon and just taking in the wonder of
Speaker 1: nature and then stepping on a lighter or you know,
Speaker 1: six pack ring. It really is depressing. Um. And then
Speaker 1: we Americans produced two hundred and forty pounds of plastic
Speaker 1: per person per year, so that's a little statistic for you.
Speaker 1: And four hundred billion plastic bags are discarded worldwide every year.
Speaker 1: That's another thing to keep in mind. Little plastic bags
Speaker 1: get to the grocery store. But again, if you travel back, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of centuries, you're not going to
Speaker 1: find this situation. You're not gonna find plastics everywhere. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the more fascinating um little stories of the
Speaker 1: genesis of plastic um comes to comes to us from
Speaker 1: an article called Plastic Fantastic by A. Jennifer Kahn for
Speaker 1: Mother Jones Um. And in this article she she mentions
Speaker 1: how in the eighteen fifties you had this, uh, this
Speaker 1: major manufacturer of Billard's equipment. You know pool. You know
Speaker 1: you're shooting pool. You're you have these pool balls and
Speaker 1: you have to everyone know foot pool is. But but
Speaker 1: to to play pool, you have to have these these objects. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: in the old days you had to make the Billard
Speaker 1: balls out of ivory, okay, and you can only get
Speaker 1: like eight balls out of a single large Asian elephant tusk.
Speaker 1: And while these used to their elephants everywhere they were,
Speaker 1: they were easier to come by. But by this point, uh,
Speaker 1: they were hunted to near extinction um for their ivory.
Speaker 1: So I mean more importantly that that is the whole extinction,
Speaker 1: near extinction of the Asian elephant. There. That's certainly a
Speaker 1: the more pressing concern. But for the purposes of this story,
Speaker 1: where are they going to get more Billard balls? They're like, well,
Speaker 1: that sucks with the elephants. But man's got to play
Speaker 1: play billards, and billards is our business. Ladies got to
Speaker 1: wear a corset another thing. So they need a material
Speaker 1: to replace ivory. So manufacturer Michael Pellan offered a ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollar reward to anyone who could create an artificial
Speaker 1: material that mimicked ivory. So it needs to be pliable,
Speaker 1: it needs to be durable and um. And this was
Speaker 1: the the actual quote is that if any inventive genius
Speaker 1: would discover a substitute for ivory, possess possessing those qualities
Speaker 1: which make it valuable to the billard player, he would
Speaker 1: make a handsome fortune for himself and earn Austin's serious gratitude.
Speaker 1: And so New York chemist John Wesley Hyatt steps up
Speaker 1: and uh, and he creates this compound called celloid. Hi. Who,
Speaker 1: I'll have it right here, Yeah, go for it. And
Speaker 1: so he brings these selloid balls to Michael Pellan, presumably
Speaker 1: collects the reward, and we have billards to this day
Speaker 1: and a few elephants. And this is the first sort
Speaker 1: of tinkering that we see with materials to try to
Speaker 1: replicate other sort of items like ivory. And then you
Speaker 1: have Charles Goodyear who uses volcanization to process natural rubber.
Speaker 1: Now he discovered this in blimps and begin hunting them
Speaker 1: for their plastic, right blimp? No, No, I have that
Speaker 1: that wrong. Yeah, the blimp started hunting him. No, I
Speaker 1: was thinking like the like the Goodyear blimp is a
Speaker 1: natural creature that is hunted for sport and for its
Speaker 1: precious plastics. Yeah, but that's not the case. No, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not. But that is one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: you rarely see them in the air anymore, right, because
Speaker 1: I've been hunted down pretty pretty much. But um, but
Speaker 1: he did use this volcanization process for Nepal rubber, and
Speaker 1: this actually paved the way for something called thermo setting,
Speaker 1: which melts materials and allows them to be molded into
Speaker 1: a solid shape. And you get about six or seven
Speaker 1: different people who are tinkering with this process. But it's
Speaker 1: not until nineteen o seven when Leo Hendrick Bakeland improved
Speaker 1: phennel formaldehyde reaction techniques and invented the first fully synthetic
Speaker 1: resin to become commercially successful and trade named it bake Light,
Speaker 1: which you may ring a bell for people, doesn't ring
Speaker 1: a bell like that, you're standing out the old timey
Speaker 1: phones um like with a rotary dial. That's like a
Speaker 1: big white product. Oh, let's see, I think bakel I
Speaker 1: hear bake light. I just think easy bake ovens. Plastic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but fast forwards one and you begin to see that
Speaker 1: there are more and more products that are using plastic,
Speaker 1: particularly when the US military begins to replace some metal
Speaker 1: parts of plastic ones. And we're talking about anywhere anything
Speaker 1: from like bugles to actual combs, because before that, combs
Speaker 1: were made out of rubber, and before rubber, they were
Speaker 1: made out of ivory. Actually, and people are creating a
Speaker 1: lot of these by accident too, or just they're they're
Speaker 1: tinkering with existing formulas. N thirties British researchers um more
Speaker 1: or less accidentally in the created polyethylene um. So I'm
Speaker 1: and you see see a lot of that. Like if
Speaker 1: you look at the list of plastics, there's a long
Speaker 1: list of various very important plastics, each one with with
Speaker 1: certain terroistic characteristics that make it ideal for certain purposes.
Speaker 1: So let's go a little bit into the basics of
Speaker 1: how it's made. Plastics are made from oil, and oil
Speaker 1: is a carbon rich raw material and plastics are large
Speaker 1: carbon containing compounds. Uh. Plastics are polymers, large molecules made
Speaker 1: of repeating units of smaller molecules, and these smaller molecules
Speaker 1: are called monomers, and these are chemically bound together. And
Speaker 1: a polymer is like a chain in which each link
Speaker 1: is a monomer, So think of it that way. Um,
Speaker 1: All plastic is made of carbon, and man made plastic
Speaker 1: uses carbon derived from oil, while biopolymers, which we'll talk about,
Speaker 1: or bioplastics use carbon derived from natural materials. Now, one
Speaker 1: thing to keep in mind about the about the plastics
Speaker 1: made from petroleum and and fossil fuel components. They're not
Speaker 1: huge consumers of those, uh, five of the five percent
Speaker 1: of the energy and uh. And originally, like some of
Speaker 1: the earlier plastics were made from coal tar, which is
Speaker 1: a waste product from from coking coal for incineration. So
Speaker 1: um so so. And that was another thing to keep
Speaker 1: in mind about why plastic exploded all over the place.
Speaker 1: It wasn't. It wasn't because someone said, hey, here's a
Speaker 1: really expensive means of creating something that doesn't work very well,
Speaker 1: let's replace glass and stuff with it. And no, it
Speaker 1: was super useful in in in various areas. But also
Speaker 1: it was cheap to produce. You could produce more or
Speaker 1: less as a byproduct of other activities. Yeah, it wasn't
Speaker 1: basically like captains of industry stepping back and from the factories,
Speaker 1: they're saying, hey, what's that what's that steam or that smoke,
Speaker 1: and can we somehow harness it into something else? So
Speaker 1: as you say, it is a byproduct types of plastic
Speaker 1: polystream which you probably know is styrofoam, uh, polyvinyl chloride PVC,
Speaker 1: like in pipes um you often see that, and plumbing
Speaker 1: and poly vinyl led down chloride thram wrap. UM. You
Speaker 1: mentioned kevlar. There's dacron, which is a coating on pianos
Speaker 1: and guitars. Polyesters on pianos. Yeah, I know. See again,
Speaker 1: your your piano would advantage. I would have thought that, hey,
Speaker 1: the piano, that's a high grade item made well, even
Speaker 1: the keys, you're not making those from ivory these days, right, right,
Speaker 1: So your piano would vantage too if you were trying
Speaker 1: to get rid of all plastic around you. Uh teflon
Speaker 1: polar fleeced again, that's the type of lightweight polyester and
Speaker 1: um in thermoset or thermosetic plastics like polyurethane um, and
Speaker 1: that isn't everything from garden houses, two shoes, and truck seats.
Speaker 1: It's everywhere, all right. So there's just a quick intro
Speaker 1: into our plastic palace that we've built for ourselves, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss some of the ramifications of living
Speaker 1: in that plastic cow All right, we're back. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've created this enormous plastic world for ourselves. It's great.
Speaker 1: It's made out of everything from PVC to to kevlar.
Speaker 1: It's durable when we need we needed to be durable.
Speaker 1: It's resistant to acids when we needed to be resistant
Speaker 1: to acids. It's bendable when we want it to be
Speaker 1: to be bendable. I mean, it's it's it's it's really
Speaker 1: killing it. Really. It is one of those things that's
Speaker 1: a material that is truly innovative, that you can put
Speaker 1: your imagination into and make anything out of it. The problem,
Speaker 1: of course, is that some plastics don't even break down
Speaker 1: for about a thousand years. So obviously a lot of
Speaker 1: the junk that we're creating, and I say junk in
Speaker 1: in terms of like bags and things that we tend
Speaker 1: to throw away or we think that we're recycling and
Speaker 1: it's just going to be it's a one to one
Speaker 1: proposition where this bottle will be recycled again into another
Speaker 1: bottle is not necessarily the case. Yeah. And also when
Speaker 1: you're dealing with a thousand year period for it to
Speaker 1: break down, um, then you're then then it's not just
Speaker 1: a matter of oh, the snack cake was in plastic
Speaker 1: and now that plastics around for a thousand years. It's
Speaker 1: also like I bought this stool at the furniture store.
Speaker 1: It's made out of plastic, and I'm getting a lot
Speaker 1: of use out of it. But then if you could
Speaker 1: end up throwing it away in ten years, uh, fifty years,
Speaker 1: if it's thrown away at the end of your life,
Speaker 1: if it maybe the last two generations, it's still potentially
Speaker 1: winding up his junk somewhere and continuing to just exist. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And even if you were to recycle it, um, you're
Speaker 1: essentially re melting like say bags and recasting the plastic.
Speaker 1: And according to the United States e p A, manufacturing
Speaker 1: new plastic from recycled plastic requires two thirds of the
Speaker 1: energy used in virgin plastic manufacturing UM. And another problem
Speaker 1: is that the polymer chains break during the process, resulting
Speaker 1: in a lesser product. So again it's not apples to
Speaker 1: Apple's process and it can only be recycled so many times. Also,
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention that a two thousand and eleven
Speaker 1: North Carolina State University UM study published in the Journal
Speaker 1: of Environmental Science and Technology found that a biodegradable plastic
Speaker 1: called pH BO emits more methane than food waste or
Speaker 1: newspaper in landfills, and because it decreate degrades much faster,
Speaker 1: the newspaper will emit that methane in a matter of
Speaker 1: years rather than decades. So it's also a question of
Speaker 1: making stuff that that can break down in a way
Speaker 1: that UM is sustainable for us. Yeah, because you know
Speaker 1: want situation where you're solving one problem, then you're creating
Speaker 1: another that that tends to be with why these things ago? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then compounding that problem is that the EP estimates
Speaker 1: that two thirds of landfills do not have methane collection capabilities.
Speaker 1: So not only are you creating more methane, but you
Speaker 1: don't have ways to collect it and to make sure
Speaker 1: it doesn't go into the atmosphere. Of course, the big
Speaker 1: thing that I'm sure it has come to a number
Speaker 1: of people's mind already is is b p A. That's
Speaker 1: a big deal these days. I mean, if you're buying something,
Speaker 1: the plastic item to put food in or drink out
Speaker 1: off you, you're probably looking to make sure that it's
Speaker 1: b p A free well. And b p A is
Speaker 1: something that is short for bicenol a, and it is
Speaker 1: an estrogenic chemical, and those types of chemicals are chemicals
Speaker 1: that are body's mistake for the natural hormones and the
Speaker 1: estrogen family, leading to concerns that it can have harmful
Speaker 1: effects um adverse fact effects excuse me, on fetal and
Speaker 1: infant brain development, as well as an increased tendency towards obesity. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is really ties into our our fears and
Speaker 1: and legitimate concerns about about the obesity epidemics, particularly in
Speaker 1: the United States. The idea that we're eating horrible food
Speaker 1: that's making us fat, and we're also eating it out
Speaker 1: of out of out of these uh, these plastics that
Speaker 1: are essentially giving our body what it thinks is estrogen
Speaker 1: and contributing to that obesity right, and and this is
Speaker 1: not a black and white issue at all. In fact,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, um the plastics have been
Speaker 1: in use or wide use for about fifty years, so
Speaker 1: we don't have all the data yet, but we obviously
Speaker 1: has been We've been collecting them, are collecting that data,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of information is coming out that
Speaker 1: uh could play into some fearmongering. So we don't want
Speaker 1: to necessarily do that, but we want to try to
Speaker 1: hit some points and get a clearer picture if we can.
Speaker 1: We will not come away from this discussion saying whether
Speaker 1: or not plastic is harmful for us definitively into what
Speaker 1: extent um, but we can at least sort of touch
Speaker 1: on it. There's a two thousand and eleven study by
Speaker 1: Paul Terry and jenkin Chen at the University of Tennessee,
Speaker 1: and the studies called most plastic products released estrogenic chemicals
Speaker 1: and UM parnables. Blogger and chemist Christine Lepisto actually talked
Speaker 1: about this and when of her blog posts, she said
Speaker 1: the study found that over seventy of plastics leached leached
Speaker 1: estrogenic chemicals UM in a wide range of plastic products
Speaker 1: right off the shelf, both with or without package contents,
Speaker 1: and then she said that when the plastics were stressed
Speaker 1: by simulations of typical real world situations like dishwashing or
Speaker 1: microwaving or exposure to sunlight, that percentage actually increased of
Speaker 1: the plastics tested. So, in other words, all plastics may
Speaker 1: leach chemicals that mimic estrogen and UH to a pretty
Speaker 1: large extent here. So we're gonna throw a little bit
Speaker 1: more stats and studies at you just so that you
Speaker 1: guys can kind of get an idea of what's going
Speaker 1: on here. UM. B p A and rat studies. There
Speaker 1: are a ton of them, UM that are pointed on
Speaker 1: to all sorts of problematic scenarios. One of them is
Speaker 1: a two thousand intense study of pregnant rats that were
Speaker 1: dosed with either one point two or two point for
Speaker 1: microgram grams per kilogram per day of b p A,
Speaker 1: and the b p A was actually fed to them
Speaker 1: in the form of sessame oil, and those doses are
Speaker 1: well under the dose of fifty kgs the established amount
Speaker 1: by the e p A is being safe for human
Speaker 1: consumption or exposure. And they found that the male children
Speaker 1: of those rats fed the bp A lowers fertility in adulthood,
Speaker 1: and that the effect they persist for at least three generations.
Speaker 1: So what you're seeing here is um in a fact
Speaker 1: that can carry through generation to generations. So if you
Speaker 1: extrapolate that with a human, you could say, okay, so
Speaker 1: if someone were to be exposed to be p A,
Speaker 1: that at child's grandchildren, even though they were raised in
Speaker 1: a psyche pure environment, their genes actually maybe a bit
Speaker 1: distorted or changed because of that exposure to b p A.
Speaker 1: Because if that's the extrapolation, we're taking this the data
Speaker 1: from rats and trying to figure out how it affects
Speaker 1: us um that, then this is really interesting. At two
Speaker 1: thousand and ninth study of rats looking at endocrine disruption
Speaker 1: found that when pregnant rats were fed b p A
Speaker 1: and another group were fed oral contraceptives that have estrogen
Speaker 1: eminem uh, it was actually the contraceptives that caused genital
Speaker 1: mut mutation and reduced fertility and female offspring, while the
Speaker 1: female b p A offspring rats were unaffected. Okay, so
Speaker 1: this is mudding the waters a bit um, I don't
Speaker 1: know what to be afraid of now, Well, right, um,
Speaker 1: you know we're not obviously going to start feeding all,
Speaker 1: you know, each other oral contraceptives. But they were trying
Speaker 1: to use a control there, So estrogen being in oral
Speaker 1: contraceptives was the control to see, you know, what was
Speaker 1: going to fuss with the system. More turns out it
Speaker 1: was the contraceptives. So then two thousand eleven Forbes magazine,
Speaker 1: there's a article very interesting that says, majestically scientific federal
Speaker 1: study on b p A has stunning finding. So why
Speaker 1: is the media ignoring it? Yeah, it's a great article.
Speaker 1: And the and in the article they quote just in
Speaker 1: Tea Garden um it was part of that study, and uh,
Speaker 1: Tea Garden says, in a nutshell, we can now say,
Speaker 1: for the adult human population exposed to even very high
Speaker 1: dietary levels, blood concentrations of the bioactive form of b
Speaker 1: p A throughout the day are below our ability to
Speaker 1: detect them, and orders of magnitude lower than those causing
Speaker 1: effects and rodents exposed to be p A. So what
Speaker 1: they had done in a twenty four hour period they
Speaker 1: had actually taken human volunteers and fed them foods that
Speaker 1: were you know, exupposed to be p A out of
Speaker 1: can so on and so forth. So it was very
Speaker 1: intentional exposure to b p A. And then that was
Speaker 1: interesting to say that those those b p A levels
Speaker 1: just weren't detected and it was very different from what
Speaker 1: was happening with the rats. So it's telling us a
Speaker 1: different story. Oftentimes, we will, you know, look to animals
Speaker 1: to try to give us some sort of sense of, um,
Speaker 1: you know, what sort of chemicals or environmental conditions could
Speaker 1: possibly affect us as well. But the jury is just
Speaker 1: still out on whether or not or to what extent
Speaker 1: b p A affects us. That being said, certainly, you
Speaker 1: start reading all this stuff and and I know, for
Speaker 1: my own part, I think, well, I'm just gonna steer
Speaker 1: clear of the b p A stuff when possible, just
Speaker 1: to be on the safe side, right Sure, which makes sense,
Speaker 1: and it's good that they took it out of baby bottles,
Speaker 1: and because certainly that those are developmental times that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't want any exposure, you'd want less exposure. Um. But
Speaker 1: where we really see the canary in the coal line
Speaker 1: again is with the animals. And we see this in
Speaker 1: a very concrete way because a canary in the coal
Speaker 1: mine sometimes has plastic inside the canary and the belly
Speaker 1: of the Canary. Yeah. According to Mother Jones, uh, in
Speaker 1: an article called Where Plastic Goes to Kill Each year,
Speaker 1: undegraded plastic chokes to death some one hundred thousand whales, dolphins, seals, manatees,
Speaker 1: plus an unknown number of sea turtles and about two
Speaker 1: million birds. Yeah. I mean, and uh we we sall
Speaker 1: some some articles too where they provide photographic evidence of
Speaker 1: what this looks like like all the plastic pieces that
Speaker 1: were taken from a turtle stomach or or or a
Speaker 1: necropsy of a of a I think one of them
Speaker 1: was an albatross. Ironically enough, that contains all of this plastic,
Speaker 1: these plastic pieces that just wind up there. And it's
Speaker 1: just really disturbing to to think of it, because I mean,
Speaker 1: we've what we've all seen like footage of oh, there's
Speaker 1: an animal and it got its neck cotton m a
Speaker 1: six pack ring, you know, but it's even and that's
Speaker 1: certainly disturbing in and of itself, but but then to
Speaker 1: see that it's just winding up inside the animals and
Speaker 1: causing all this uh, this discomfort, it's uh, it's really sober.
Speaker 1: It was it the albatross too. They were talking about
Speaker 1: the the young before they reach four months of age
Speaker 1: aren't able to regurge tate, so whatever they take in
Speaker 1: cigarette lighters or whatnot just kind of sits in their
Speaker 1: belly for the rest of their lives. Um it's real, yeah, chief,
Speaker 1: So it does remind me of the Simpsons episode where um,
Speaker 1: it's a Lisa episodes of some people might have missed it,
Speaker 1: but where Lisa gets uh Montgomery burns the evil millionaire
Speaker 1: to the open recycling plant and uh and and she
Speaker 1: thinks she's she's changed him because he hit rock bottom,
Speaker 1: he lost the plant. Now he's reached into recycling, he's
Speaker 1: into making the earth better. And then it's revealed that
Speaker 1: his big plan for the plant and is that he's
Speaker 1: going to take all these six pack rings and he
Speaker 1: u has them sewn together into a giant net that
Speaker 1: they then roll out into the ocean and just catch
Speaker 1: all of these of it like everything from whales, the squid,
Speaker 1: and just rolling him in and then turning them into
Speaker 1: this this grotesque meat paste. So wow, all right, well yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's thanks for the uplifting a bit there. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: so obviously there's a trade off here. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we've got plastic in our environment. It's not going away. Um.
Speaker 1: There is a certain amount of adaptability that it provides
Speaker 1: us in convenience in our lives. Um. You know, it's
Speaker 1: used in cars. It makes them lighter and more fuel efficient,
Speaker 1: which is very important. Um. And it makes our existence
Speaker 1: less cumbersome and safer. And I'm thinking about that in
Speaker 1: terms of like something like as basic as an ivy bag. Right,
Speaker 1: that's no longer glass, and it's portable and it's not
Speaker 1: something you have to worry about in an emergency situation. Um.
Speaker 1: And it is somewhat democratizing. I mean, you think about this.
Speaker 1: These products are made cheaply and they're available to nearly everyone.
Speaker 1: Think about if it's an eighteen twenty one and and
Speaker 1: you're trying to better yourself in society, it takes a
Speaker 1: lot of money to go and get a comb made
Speaker 1: of ivory. Yeah, so you're walking around with BedHead all
Speaker 1: the time. Um, you know. But you know, I make
Speaker 1: light of that, but seriously, this is something that would
Speaker 1: would have marked been an outward mark of the halves
Speaker 1: and have nots. So we just take this for granted
Speaker 1: that all these different products and materials are available to
Speaker 1: us and it is somewhat democratizing. And as we touched
Speaker 1: on earlier, I mean, and then the medical industry, plastic
Speaker 1: is everywhere and is often involved in in in UH,
Speaker 1: in gadgets or to or procedures that would just not
Speaker 1: be the same without plastic. And we have plastic implants,
Speaker 1: we have plastic surgical tools, and then when you get
Speaker 1: into the electronic equipment, certainly plastic is a key component.
Speaker 1: The next time you're the doctor's office, look around at
Speaker 1: all the plastic and try to imagine getting your check
Speaker 1: up or procedure done without it. So that actually correlates
Speaker 1: to to life expectancy, right, And I'm gonna get a
Speaker 1: heart transplant if there's not plastic available or these tools
Speaker 1: to make it happen. Um. All right, So when we
Speaker 1: talk about all of these this this junk, all of
Speaker 1: this plastic that we've created, and how it has democratized
Speaker 1: our lives or its has changed us. Um, everything that
Speaker 1: we discard seems like an abstract notion until you start
Speaker 1: thinking about something called the Great Pacific garbage Patch. Yes,
Speaker 1: and this is uh, this is an idea that that's
Speaker 1: certainly captures the imagination. Because I know when I think
Speaker 1: of it. I imagine like some Godzilla sized plastic heat
Speaker 1: or just like an island with its own like plastic
Speaker 1: monsters living on it out in the ocean. That will
Speaker 1: show actually pretty close to what it's becoming. Right, And
Speaker 1: but it's also been kind of a sticking point um
Speaker 1: in arguments about the arguments that basically come down to
Speaker 1: to what degree we should care about pollution and the planet,
Speaker 1: where people are like, oh, the garbage patch is just
Speaker 1: made up by by hippies. It's and then and then
Speaker 1: other people on the other side is no, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a real problem. In the other side, well, let's
Speaker 1: see some photos of it. And this this kind of
Speaker 1: back and forth that's kind of waged over the past
Speaker 1: seven or eight years. I feel well, and there's this
Speaker 1: idea that there's there's it's not just one patch either.
Speaker 1: There are several patches um. But what we're talking about
Speaker 1: is the Texas sized garbage patch in the North Pacific Gyre,
Speaker 1: which holds an estimated three million metric tons of mostly
Speaker 1: plastic trash, six times the mass of the plankton found there.
Speaker 1: And most of this is broken down into microplastics that
Speaker 1: chemically bond with PCBs DDT. We know this is deep, right,
Speaker 1: and endocrine disruptors to make this area a million times
Speaker 1: more toxic than surrounding areas. So the problem here is
Speaker 1: that those little plankton sized flakes that have broken down
Speaker 1: are then mistakenly consumed by jellyfish and small fish that
Speaker 1: are are then consumed by larger fish which that are
Speaker 1: then consumed by us. And so you have so and
Speaker 1: then we up with little plastic pieces and the remnants
Speaker 1: of plastic inside the entire food chain. Yeah, but okay,
Speaker 1: here is the silver lining here, and I love there
Speaker 1: has actually been a bacteria found or several that consume plastic. Okay,
Speaker 1: this and this reminds me to some of the like
Speaker 1: talking about oil spills and the idea that oh we
Speaker 1: do have. You can see some bacteria that is developing
Speaker 1: the ability to consume petroleum uh and so it stands
Speaker 1: to reason that that they also will eventually uh and
Speaker 1: and are developing an appetite for plastic as well. Well.
Speaker 1: And you know, of course there are some concerns with this,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, this is really incredible news
Speaker 1: and you know, there needs to be a lot more
Speaker 1: data involved with it, and uh you know, in terms
Speaker 1: of trying to figure out whether or not this is
Speaker 1: a good sustainable solution. But I wanted to mention that
Speaker 1: Yale has an annual rainforest expedition and laboratory where they
Speaker 1: let students venture into the jungles of Ecuador to search
Speaker 1: for plants and then culture the micro organisms within the
Speaker 1: plant tissue and um one of the students brought back
Speaker 1: a fungus that they found love of too much on polyurethane.
Speaker 1: So and there have been several different um as I
Speaker 1: say about tiers that have been found too much on plastic,
Speaker 1: but I really wanted to talk about this one because
Speaker 1: it's called Pestelopotopas microsphora, and it is the first one
Speaker 1: that anyone has found that that survives solely on a
Speaker 1: steady diet of polyurethane. And it gets even better because
Speaker 1: the fun guy can survive not just on plastic alone,
Speaker 1: but also in anaerobic conditions without any sort of oxygen.
Speaker 1: So then you start to think about landfills and how
Speaker 1: they're basically airless and this is the perfect condition for
Speaker 1: this sort of fun guy, so they could just run
Speaker 1: wild in a like a tightly packed down landfill and
Speaker 1: just eat all the plastic cup exactly. I mean, this
Speaker 1: has a ton of promise. But then, of course there
Speaker 1: are some people who would say, okay, so now that
Speaker 1: you have this fun guy that you know, is it
Speaker 1: breaks down uh plastic and eats it. What happened if
Speaker 1: you know this goes palace. We live in the plastic palace,
Speaker 1: and we're celebrating the emergence of the back of a
Speaker 1: plastic eating back period. Right, So then you're going to
Speaker 1: the Michael Crichton route and you start to think, okay, well,
Speaker 1: in the hospital setting, you certainly wouldn't want, you know,
Speaker 1: the the new hip that's going into your body to
Speaker 1: to have some sort of um bacteria or you know
Speaker 1: that would break down that hip or anything else really
Speaker 1: in any of the tools that are going to be
Speaker 1: used on you. Yeah, the figuring I just painted. It's
Speaker 1: bad enough I have to worry about the kitten eating it.
Speaker 1: I don't want to worry about bacteria eating it as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's very interesting proposition and if you want to
Speaker 1: read more about it, you can check out the paper.
Speaker 1: It is called biodegradation of polyester polyurethane by Endo Fight
Speaker 1: It fun guy. Wow, to think about polyester too, being
Speaker 1: susceptible to this. So many great garments. Half of that's right,
Speaker 1: it would take out all the second hand stores. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the big take home out of all of this. Again,
Speaker 1: we've we've built this, this plastic palace. We've build this
Speaker 1: plastic lives for ourselves. It's it's everywhere, and we cannot
Speaker 1: go back. We can't just decide we're not gonna do
Speaker 1: plastic anymore. It's just not gonna happen. But what we
Speaker 1: can do is we can of course manage it. We
Speaker 1: can develop better ways to break down the plastic that
Speaker 1: we have. We can depend more and more on bioplastics
Speaker 1: that are made from things like like corn and uh another,
Speaker 1: biological agents who are not having to depend even a
Speaker 1: little bit on petroleum and and and also just become
Speaker 1: smarter with our use of it, realizing that once you
Speaker 1: create something out of plastic, it's not necessarily something that
Speaker 1: can then be recycled and made hold again. It's you
Speaker 1: need to think of it as a real investment of
Speaker 1: you know, even if it's a small one. So if
Speaker 1: it's you know, something like if it's a if it's
Speaker 1: a choice between taking sixteen snack cakes and individually packaging
Speaker 1: them and then putting them in a larger package. We
Speaker 1: should we should air on the side of putting them
Speaker 1: all in a single bag. You know, just all the
Speaker 1: little things that add up to the whole of just
Speaker 1: using less plastic, using it in a smarter manner, and
Speaker 1: using more sustainable plastics. Yeah, so there you go. That's
Speaker 1: that's a good reminder next time you go to the
Speaker 1: grocery store or you're sorting out to the plastic in
Speaker 1: your life and wondering if everything's realatting recycled into what
Speaker 1: degree we have control over the situation. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: one for me, I've been trying more and more to
Speaker 1: avoid individually packaged snack items, you know, because I mean
Speaker 1: it's attractive on one level. You're like, oh, I can
Speaker 1: buy the bag of snack Micks, or I can buy
Speaker 1: the bag of six bags of snack Micks that are
Speaker 1: small and they fit easily into your lunch box. Or
Speaker 1: I can take just a few seconds and and or
Speaker 1: or heaven forbid, use a little will control and take
Speaker 1: the whole bag of snack Micks to work with me
Speaker 1: for the week that never but but still I can
Speaker 1: certainly divide it up. I don't I don't need the
Speaker 1: other little pre made bags already there. But anyway, so
Speaker 1: plastics aside, Let's let's call over the robit and uh
Speaker 1: read a little listener mail. All right, This one comes
Speaker 1: from Jackie Jackie Ritson and says, greetings, Uh, first the
Speaker 1: tried and true cliche awesome podcast. Just listen to the
Speaker 1: cracking episode and have a couple of comments. Personally, this
Speaker 1: is my favorite apparently mythological creature. I suspect this comes
Speaker 1: from a combination of twenty Leagues under the Sea awesome film.
Speaker 1: I always I watched the Disney movie a lot growing up,
Speaker 1: and you was always enamored by the scenes with the
Speaker 1: squid uh and Pirates of the Caribbean, which also fetched
Speaker 1: the cracking um. And she continues. The reason I say
Speaker 1: apparently is because I have a strange desire for one's
Speaker 1: beat to turn up as proof of their existence, which,
Speaker 1: as we discussed in the cracking episode, that's uh what
Speaker 1: some archaeologists are up to as well, curious into the
Speaker 1: is to the existence of a possible um prehistoric cracking.
Speaker 1: She continues, Anyway, you made a comment early on about
Speaker 1: how cephalopods were essentially mythical until the eighteen seventies or
Speaker 1: of sometime around then. It reminded me of one of
Speaker 1: the stories in Kim Newman's book Hound of the of
Speaker 1: the the Ubervilles, all about professional professor Moriarty. A great read.
Speaker 1: Uh this uh my favorite, the Red Planet League, in
Speaker 1: which the professor seeks to destroy his nemesis, the Astronomer
Speaker 1: Royale or the Astronomer Royal, I'm not sure. I can't
Speaker 1: remember his name at the moment the professor plans. The
Speaker 1: Professor's plan involves the use of some rather ugly squid.
Speaker 1: Uh but more I shan't say. Well, that's my email again.
Speaker 1: Great podcast. I'm off to listen to the one on Gigantis.
Speaker 1: Um I had to skip ahead, I mean to the
Speaker 1: Krackens cheers, uh Jackie so uh yeah, so there's some
Speaker 1: favorite Krakens that just reminded me of the artwork that
Speaker 1: you sent the other day of the silkenferred. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you uh I put we post ended up posting
Speaker 1: it on all the social media things. So go back
Speaker 1: and look at that if you get a chance. It's
Speaker 1: pretty pretty wild. It makes it look like a p
Speaker 1: you want to own. Yeah, I mean, really, you add
Speaker 1: some fur to it and it's amazing what can happen.
Speaker 1: It's it's funny because it reminds me of a dream
Speaker 1: that my wife had. She had a dream where she
Speaker 1: had like a kid in the sized octopus that was
Speaker 1: furry and um, and then her brother was trying to
Speaker 1: take it from her or something but brother. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: so anyway, I always great to hear hear from from listeners,
Speaker 1: and especially there with with their own like personal likes
Speaker 1: and dislikes in their own nostalgia might happen to be
Speaker 1: relearning a particular topic. So so that's great. Thanks for
Speaker 1: writing us. If you would like to write us, particularly
Speaker 1: if you have comments about plastics plastic in your life.
Speaker 1: Have you managed to free yourself from plastic? Do you
Speaker 1: think it's even possible? How much plastic is in your life?
Speaker 1: What is plastic done for you? Um? What are you
Speaker 1: doing to try and uh curb your plastic usage? Then
Speaker 1: right into us. You can find us on Facebook and
Speaker 1: tumbler as stuff to blow your mind, and you can
Speaker 1: also find us on Twitter where we are blow the
Speaker 1: Mind and you can also dry that's a line at
Speaker 1: blew the Mind at discovery dot com For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com.