We’ve known about the toxic effect of microplastics on our environment for a long time now, and the dramatic effect it has on our oceans, on air quality, and to the wildlife living everywhere on earth. Microplastics are ubiquitous now, found in our food, in our water, and in our air.
What is just now becoming more and more clear is how much these plastics are becoming part of our own body composition and affecting our health. Research over just the past five years has revealed the extent of plastic embedded in all of our major organ systems. Did you know that you are partly composed of plastic at this point? It’s not an exaggeration. Plastic has been found in:
- our hearts (in a study published July 2023 in Ecotoxicology and Public Health)
- our major blood vessels, and is correlated to a higher rate of heart disease (published March 2024 in The New England Journal of Medicine)
- every region of our lungs (published in July 2022 in Science of the Total Environment)
- 100% of human placentas (published in May 2024 in Toxicological Sciences)
- 100% of uterus samples (published in June 2024 in Environmental Sciences and Technology)
- human breast milk (published June 2022 in Polymers)
- our blood stream (published June 2024 in Environment International)
- 100% of testicles, and correlated to smaller than normal size (published in June 2024 in Toxicological Sciences)
- and now in penis tissue, with a possible association with erectile dysfunction (published in June 2024 in the International Journal of Impotence Research.)
In fact, the World Wide Fund (WWF) estimated in a study released June 2019 that humans have an average weekly intake of about 5 grams of microplastic — the equivalent of eating an entire credit card every single week.
The topic of how to decrease our environmental output of plastic through more regulations on the food and beverage, automotive, and textile industries, as well as through our own private consumption of single use plastics, is too broad a topic for me to sum up in one article. But as a physician, where I’d like to start is how to dramatically reduce your direct intake of microplastics so that less of them end up accumulating in your body. Here are a few suggestions:
5 Ways To Reduce The Plastic Going Into Your Body:
1. Drink filtered water
The worst water you can drink is bottle water, which is filled with microplastics — the most recent report found an average of 100,000 particles of plastic per bottle. Tap water is infinitely preferable to this, although that is not saying much because public water supplies have tons of toxic chemicals including chlorine, fluoride, prescription medications, pesticides and many other toxic chemicals… as well as their own share of microplastics, albeit in a smaller amount.
So ideally, avoid both bottled and tap water and instead simply run your water through a filtration system. This is a win win solution — running your tap water through a filtration system eliminates your purchase of single use plastic bottles (reducing the toxic load to the environment) while also reducing your personal consumption of microplastics (reducing the toxic load to your body.)
Make sure to use a water filtration system that has been tested and found to remove microplastic — not all water filters actually remove microplastics — this is the one I use because it filters out 99.999% of microplastics, is made from stainless steel, filters out fluoride, chlorine, pesticides and other nasty contaminants while leaving the healthy minerals in the water, is industry tested and certified on a regular basis, and about a dozen other reasons that it’s the best and is the one on my own kitchen counter.
Not only is it the only water I will drink, it’s the only water I give to my children and even my pets, including my dogs and my quail! Find it right here.
2. Don’t cook or store food in plastic
Unfortunately microplastics are in the soil and water supply, so they end up in both produce and meat even if you are eating the freshest food right from a farmers market that has never touched a plastic container. While choosing fresh produce and meats is a better option than foods that are packaged in plastic, how you prepare and cook your food adds additional microplastics to your food without you ever realizing it.
Because both heat and abrasion release additional microplastic into foods, it’s a good idea to replace that plastic cutting board (which is putting scraps of plastic directly into your food) and that plastic bowl (that you are hitting with your electric mixer over and over, causing additional microplastics in your food) and instead opt for glass, stainless steel, and ceramic food prep containers and wooden cutting boards.
When storing food, the same thing applies — when you food touches plastic, it’s getting additional microplastics in it, so how you store food matters. Opt for glass, ceramic and stainless steel containers instead of plastic baggies and Tupperware type plastic containers. Not only does this ensure there are no additional microplastics added to your food while it is in storage, but it’s a safer option for reheating your food when you are ready to eat it, as we will talk about next.
3. Avoid reheating and reusing plastic containers
A larger source of contamination than even the food itself comes from how it’s packaged — if plastic is touching your food, it’s likely to have more microplastics in it. In fact, a study published in March 2020 in Scientific Reports found that just opening a plastic container, or cutting a plastic with scissors, or twisting open a plastic bottle cap — basically all the ways we routinely access our food — releases microplastics for us to both inhale and to consume.
Choosing food not stored in plastic whenever possible will reduce the ways your food and beverages are contaminated with plastic, and even if you must access a food that was previously stored in plastic, at least don’t use that plastic container to heat it up. As I mentioned in #2 above, heat causes the plastic to breakdown more easily, releasing even more microplastics into your food, so an easy thing you can do to reduce your consumption of plastic is to never microwave food in plastic. It’s hard to avoid plastic from ever touching your food, but if you can at least transfer it to a glass or ceramic container to heat it, you are avoiding one of the major ways plastic gets added to your food.
And don’t reuse these containers for more food — while it’s eco-friendly to reuse plastic wrap and takeout containers, try to use them to store items other than food, or recycle them instead.
4. Don’t run plastic through a dishwasher
5. Support eco-friendly, non-plastic textiles.
If you have a choice when purchasing clothing, bedding or tableware, try to look for natural fibers (like organic cotton, wool, silk and hemp) instead of synthetic fibers (like nylon, polyester, acrylic and spandex.) This is one of the reasons that although I support the use of indoor grounding tools for those that are not able to ground to the earth outside, I absolutely do not recommend the multitude of cheap plastic grounding mats, polyester grounding sheets, and synthetic “leatherette” grounding tools that are widely available on the market today. Not only is wearing and sleeping on plastic surfaces is hot, sticky and uncomfortable, but rubbing your skin against these plastics sheds particles that can enter the body in two ways — directly absorbed through skin contact… and you can even inhale the plastic particles into your lungs.
In addition, by choosing natural fibers you are no longer supporting the manufacturing of synthetic based materials as the textile industry (along with tires, plastic bags and bottled beverages) are one of the main contributors to microplastics in our environment. Selecting all natural fabrics is win win — reducing the amount of plastics released into the environment from the manufacturing of these fabrics as well as reducing the amount of plastics your body absorbs through direct skin contact and inhalation.
The is just one of many reasons I chose eco-friendly, all natural fibers for my organic grounding tools — so that your skin is not heating up against vinyl or polyester all night long, and instead is staying cool and grounded through chemical free fabrics like organic cotton, hemp, and silk. Find those here
What it boils down to:
xoxox,
Laura Koniver MD
