How Microplastics Are Ruining Your Health - Dr Rhonda Patrick - #907

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
What have you been interested in recently? You're always learning new stuff.

**Dr. Rhonda Patrick** (0:02)
Yeah, I think most recently, I've had a real interest in ultra-processed foods, in plastic, microplastics, their associated chemicals, what they're doing to human health. That's been my latest obsession.

**Chris Williamson** (0:17)
Okay, microplastics.
Teach me about them. What do they do?

**Dr. Rhonda Patrick** (0:23)
So microplastics, I mean, we're all familiar with plastic. If you take a look in your refrigerator or your pantry, I mean, almost everything is packaged in some kind of plastic container. Plastic breaks down over time, right? So things that can accelerate that breakdown would be like heat, exposure to oxygen. And so that breakdown sheds plastic particles into whatever is being contained in that plastic container, food, beverages, whatever. So microplastics, they sort of vary in size anywhere between five microns or micromillimeters to 100 nanometers in size. And when they're like five micromillimeters, that's like something that would be equivalent to a size of like a grain of rice. You can see it. When you get down to the 100 nanomiller range, I mean, that's like a thousand times smaller than a grain of rice. So you're not going to see it, right? And honestly, those are actually technically nanoplastics, but we all just kind of call them microplastics just for simplicity. And these microplastics are getting into food. As we consume whatever food they're contained in, whether it's a beverage or disposable food, you're digesting it and they can be absorbed, right? Now, not all of them are absorbed. I think there's some studies saying that we basically consume anywhere between hundreds to thousands of particles a day. So how much of that we absorb? Not all of it, a fraction of it. But it's a lot of particles that we're absorbing every day. And these microplastics are in our water. So water is contaminated with them. If you think about water treatment plants, wastewater treatment plants are treating the water for pathogens, right, viruses, bacteria. They're not treating them for plastics that are getting into the water. And our water sources are contaminated for a variety of reasons, not to mention if you're turning on your faucet and getting water through the sink, oftentimes the water is transported through these pipes that are made of PVC, which breaks down. There's plastic in that, and it breaks down over time and sheds microplastic into your water.
So water is another source. Of course, if you're drinking bottled water out of plastic bottles, that's another added source of microplastics as well. And so microplastics themselves are, there's a growing body of evidence in terms of what they're doing to human health, and we can talk about that. But there's also chemicals that are associated with them, right?

**Chris Williamson** (3:10)
How, like just how prevalent are these things? Like how difficult is it to avoid microplastics?

**Dr. Rhonda Patrick** (3:16)
It's impossible to avoid. I mean, the fact that it's in our water source is kind of indicative of that. Unfortunately, it's not just in our water, but it's in our soil. So plants are taking that up.
It's in sludge. How's it getting into the soil? Because it's essentially runoff from rain and stuff. Microplastics and plastic chemicals are everywhere. So they're in the air. And so when rain...

**Chris Williamson** (3:48)
So they're so small that they can go up with precipitation?

**Dr. Rhonda Patrick** (3:51)
They're in the air because the main source from the air is actually our clothing. So our clothing, polyester, nylon, like the stuff that I'm wearing, for sure. I'm not wearing 100% cotton. When you wash it, it gets into the oceans. When you dry your clothes, the dryer is...

**Chris Williamson** (4:10)
It's killing me. The dryer is atomizing your microplastics and pushing them into the atmosphere.

**Dr. Rhonda Patrick** (4:14)
Into the air. And tires are a big source. So tires aren't 100% made of rubber. They're rubber and a bunch of plastic stuff. And so cars on the road, shoes on our... The rubber shoes, soles on our shoes, all that stuff has plastic and all that stuff is getting into the air. So the major source of microplastics are oral ingestion, which we talked about, and then inhalation. That's how they're getting into our bodies. So when it rains, that stuff, you know, the rain brings the microplastics into our runoff, right? And that then gets into the soil. It gets into our sludge. You know, this is like fertilizer that's used. So it's pretty much ubiquitous. It's everywhere. You're not going to avoid it. Not to mention, I mean, I guess even if you were to try and not consume any condiments or foods or anything like that made out of plastic, you're going to do a huge service. You're going to reduce, greatly reduce the amount of microplastics you're consuming. Let's say you have air filters. You're trying to filter the air, but you're not going to filter it everywhere you go, right? You're in your car. You're walking around on the street, especially if you live in a metropolitan urban area. It's very, very difficult to eliminate microplastics.