You're Dying Faster...

It’s on the menu, whether you’re eating out, or cooking at home — modern diets now include tiny servings of microplastic. Gross, right? Well, it’s true. And you only need to glance at your supermarket shopping list to find the sources of microplastic in your diet.

Studies have found microplastics, defined as pieces smaller than five millimeters in size, in everything from tea to salt, milk, seafood, honey, sugar, beer, vegetables, and even soft drinks. Tap water contains plastic, but that single-use water bottle you’re swigging from contains even more microplastics.

By land or by sea, microplastics have been found in most places where scientists have looked, including some of the most remote spots on Earth. These microplastics are not only threatening, they are likely killing the native wildlife. Why do I say likely? Because coming up with an objective measure of the threat to humans is not easy. “Nobody really knows the answer,” Mark Taylor of Macquarie University and an expert on environmental contamination told The Guardian. “But the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Scientists all over the world are trying to quantify the risk to humans presented by the ingestion of microplastics. Scientists in Italy developed a plastic-free protocol in a hospital delivery room, and then examined placentas. They found microplastics there, too. Ian Musgrave, a toxicologist at the University of Adelaide, says knowing if microplastics are harmful to humans is hard to untangle since we are exposed to so many other dangerous substances. “It is enormously difficult because we live in an environment with lots of other things,” he says. “We have a saying though, that it is the dose that makes the poison. While we are consuming things that have tiny amounts of microplastics, we don’t absorb them. But because we can’t demonstrate damage, that’s not a reason to be casual.”

Consider a report out this month on phthalates, the synthetic chemicals used to soften many of the plastic products sold in our industry. Phthalates are in hundreds of consumer products, too, like food storage containers, shampoo, makeup, perfume, and toys. According to the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Pollution, the chemicals may contribute to somewhere between 91,000 and 107,000 premature deaths a year among people ages 55 to 64 in the United States. The study estimated those deaths could cost the U.S. up to $47 billion each year in lost economic productivity. Phthalates are known to interfere with the endocrine system, and they are "linked with developmental, reproductive, brain, immune, and other problems," according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

So, what can you do to help your clients, and your family, avoid phthalates until more definitive information on the health dangers is available? Again, there’s no simple answer. Phthalates aren’t a single chemical, there’s a whole family of them. You need to understand that phthalates don’t all effect humans in the same way. Three of them: BBP, DBP, and DEHP, are permanently banned from toys and products specifically intended to help young children sleep, eat, teethe, or suck. DBP and DEHP damage the reproductive systems of lab rats, especially males. Tests on people show DBP can irritate skin. It’s not sure that BBP causes cancer in humans, but research shows it may have caused cancer in lab rats. Three more chemicals in the family, initially intended to replace some first-generation bad actors- DiDP, DINP, and DnOP- are now under an interim ban from toys that can go into a child’s mouth.

For now, the best bet to keeping your customers and their end users as safe as you can is by avoiding the alphabet soup of phthalates altogether. You can get started by simply reading product labels on items you are sourcing more closely. Unfortunately, phthalates aren’t always included on labels, especially on personal care products and vinyl or plastic toys, but when they are, look for an acronym like DHEP or DiBP. Of course, it would be nice if you could just find more items labeled “phthalate-free.”

Whether you’re working from home, or you’re back in the office, we’ve talked before about never putting plastic in the microwave, but it bears repeating here. Make sure your container is “microwave safe” and phthalate-free, especially with oily or fatty foods. Like in other dietary matters, it also helps to watch what you eat, and where. Diets high in dairy and meat can have high levels of phthalate exposure. For lots of reasons, avoid fast food, but especially because the containers can be another source of harmful exposure. Until we know the full extent of the danger lurking in microplastics and phthalates the best thing you can do for your client and your family is steer as far away from them as you can.