Hey, this is Outside In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I'm Nate Hedgie here with Halima Shah. Hi, Nate. I want to start with a question. What is your relationship with plastic like? Well, it is a part of my everyday life. I get my produce probably in one of those little plastic containers. I feel like everything I get off Amazon is wrapped in plastic. Yeah, ubiquitous. I am a reluctantly plastic conscious person. What I mean by that is that my husband is always on my case about not leaving hot food in plastic takeout boxes or throwing out plastic cutting boards. I will just say, my wife, very similar. We've got plastic cutting boards that we're trying to not use as much. Same with Teflon, we're trying to stay away from that. Yeah, that's a big one. Your wife and my husband are reasonable people for being concerned about this because studies do show that tiny pieces of these plastics that we use all the time are getting inside our bodies. We can't see them, but you can kind of assume that they're there. Yeah, absolutely. It's something that I should probably be thinking about more. If you want to raise your anxiety more, you can get a home testing kit to literally test how much plastic is in your blood. Oh, man. I don't know if I want to do that. Well, I did. Did you really? I did. I did. I got a $360 male in blood testing kit from Blueprint, which is a company that's founded by Silicon Valley's own self-proclaimed longevity athlete, Brian Johnson. Do you know who I'm talking about? I do know Brian Johnson. Every time I'm scrolling through Instagram or YouTube, his very shiny face pops up. He does have a really shiny face. Definitely looks like he's made of wax. He does. Because he sleeps under laser lights. He does that because his goal in life is literally to not die. I measure my temperature every single day. I'll work out for an hour. I'll do red light therapy, then do hyperbaric oxygen therapy, then some sauna, then I'll rinse off and then I'm ready for work. He never seems like he's having very much fun. Everything is so regimented. Oh, yeah. No one said living forever is going to be fun. What his test requires is that you prick your finger and drop your blood onto a card. Pressing down firmly. It's not puncturing. It's not piercing my skin. I found this very difficult. Yeah, I wouldn't push very hard either. I don't want to poke myself. Exactly. Now it says to massage, to encourage blood flow. Oh, shit. The blood fell on my desk, but not my test. That was like a perfect drop of blood, too. Oh, no, did you have to do it again? I did. I did. I had to prick a second finger and then I got it right. And then I put this bloodied card in an envelope and dropped it in the USPS dropbox. Wow. The results were going to arrive in four to six weeks. But before I got them, I had this big question, which is, if I find out that I do have a lot of microplastics in my body, what can I actually do about it? Like can I get it out? Right. Exactly. Like how do you like cleanse yourself of microplastics? This is Outside In and today producer Halima Shaw is digging into a new trend. The microplastics cleanse. Is this the future of healthcare in a plasticized world or is it just a very expensive form of wishful thinking? When the soft flexible tube is being inserted, you don't feel it. Stick around. And with EverPure Storage is a service subscription, your storage and security upgrade automatically with zero downtime. Your infrastructure stays current so your business never slows down. Visit everpuredata.com to learn more today. With EverPure, you're not just in the race, you're built to win it. Saving seekers, we hear you. Seeking energy savings, always keep your energy prices under the price cap. With Next Pledge, your energy prices are guaranteed to always stay below the price cap. Satisfy those savings cravings. Check out our full range of tailored energy solutions at eonnext.com forward slash save. Eonnext, we make energy savings work. Next Pledge is a 12 month fixed time trucker tariff with variable rates lower than off chance price cap for standard variable tariffs. Direct debit required. Tees and seas apply. This is Outside In. I'm Halima Shaw. I'm at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland. It's 9am, which means absolutely no one but the city's trash pickup and aquarium staff is here. And the staff is letting me wade through an urban marshland with them. The water is knee deep at most, but I'm wearing a life jacket and thigh high rubber boots. They're not sexy, but I can't help saying it anyway. I feel like Janet Jackson. The marshland here often catches plastics that the tide brings in, like wrappers from cigars and snacks or messages in plastic bottles. But it also traps microplastics. These are bits of debris about 5mm, the size of a grain of rice or smaller. And here the microplastics look like confetti, lining the edge of the marsh's grasses. They're colorful. They float. It's just a mass that collects in certain areas where the water is stagnant. This is Charmaine Dallenberg. She's the director of field conservation at the Aquarium. And every morning, she and her team grab their fishnets, not that kind, and clean up plastics, big and small. I found a really nice cutting board from a boat that I kept. We've had coolers wash up that we kind of clean out and reuse. I mean, just like weird things. It's like as well the yachts and cruise ships are passed by. Cushions that maybe blow off. I'm not here to shame people for littering. I just want to see the microplastics out in the wild. And I also want to know how Charmaine manages to do something so redundant. She cleans up plastic one morning. And the next, there's more. It is repetitive. We do the same thing every day and it can start to wear down on you. There are a few studies out there, first of all, that if people see trash on the ground, they're likely to add to it. And that really impacts our communities. Collective action against plastic pollution. I get that. The environmental and aesthetic case seem obvious. But now there's something else to consider. Human health. In the past year, there's been an explosion of studies on microplastics and their minuscule cousins, nanoplastics, which are between one and 1,000 nanometers in size. And the impact of these plastic particles on our bodies is a budding area of research. But the early results are alarming. This was actually one of the first studies to show that there was an accumulation of these microplastics in the human brain. This is Dr. Marcus Garcia. He's an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico's College of Pharmacy. And he also co-authored a blockbuster study on micro and nanoplastics, or MNPs. A new study is raising concern about microplastics after researchers found an entire spoonsworth inside samples taken from human brains. The study looked at brain, kidney and liver tissue from over 50 cadavers. And it found that brain tissue had the highest concentration of MNPs. And there was another concerning finding, too. In this study, dementia cases actually had 10 times the amount of plastic accumulation as compared to the remaining normal tissue cohort that we looked at. In other words, plastic accumulation was 10 times higher in tissue from people who had dementia. Now, I want to be clear here. The science is not strong enough to say that plastics will give you dementia. But this is what the study authors are saying. We're saying that there's more of a correlation at this point, not a causation. Even with that caveat, the study is controversial. A few months after Dr. Garcia's study was published in Nature Medicine, nine other scientists published their doubts in the same journal. To be clear, the scientists agree that microplastics can get inside of us. MNPs can enter our bodies through drinking water and seafood, through the wrapping our produce comes in, or Teflon-coated pans, or the boxes we get our takeout in. But how much of that plastic is piling up inside our organs? That's what's up for debate. One of the scientists who published their doubts in Nature Medicine worked at one of Germany's top environmental research institutions. He told The Guardian that the brain is about 60% fat, and fat can often trigger false positives for polyethylene, the most common synthetic plastic. He also went further. One bioanalytical scientist used some pretty scathing language, calling the study a joke. What do you say to those criticisms? I mean, everybody's going to have their own opinion of the research. We understood that there is potential interference, especially with polyethylene. We wrote that extensively. I mean, in the summary statement, we have all of these things listed. That being said, the brain study isn't alone in tying micro and nanoplastics to human health. A study from Italy suggested that people who had plaque and microplastics in a key artery were more likely to suffer from a stroke or heart attack. That study was also challenged for its methodology, though. Further, it looked at mice that were genetically predisposed to Alzheimer's. One group of mice was exposed to the same type of plastic used in styrofoam. Those ones showed early signs of memory problems. But the problem with that study was that it was on mice, not humans. Do you have any concern about raising the alarm too much in the race to publish results? Yeah, absolutely. That's why a lot of times, with anything that we do, even the study that we published, that was two years worth of work and it was a lot of looking, trying again, double checking all of our data. But it's still in the early stages where there's some correlations, but we haven't gotten down to definitive mechanisms or giving the 100%. Yes, these microplastics are causing X and X disease. And I think that as long as the science is getting out there and it's the best science possible, that data is only helping the community. But it's not just the scientific community catching wind of these studies. Every day, people are hearing about them too. People who might be looking for an explanation for mysterious fertility issues or wondering about a loved one's cancer diagnosis. Even if there's no scientific smoking gun linking microplastics to these health problems, that doesn't mean people aren't worried. And it's into this research gap, before we fully understand the threat, but after the alarm bells have been raised, that unproven treatments can bubble up. Which brings us to a new trend in the world of detox, the microplastics cleanse. That's after the break. There are some weeks where it feels like you have no free time. Between work, taking the kids to school, walking the dogs, picking your car up from the mechanic. It's all a lot. I mean, you are tired, you are hungry, and all you want is a good home cooked meal. But if you're like me, you often turn to the same dinners on repeat. Mac and cheese, tacos, a really boring salad that is mostly just spinach and dressing. You deserve a change that is easy and adventurous. With HelloFresh, you can cook up bold flavors from around the world without ever leaving home. Our producer, Marina, recently ordered Baramundi with Zesty Cilantro Sauce. 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Check out our full range of tailored energy solutions at eonnext.com forward slash save. Eonnext, we make energy savings work. Next Pledge is a 12 month fixed time trucker tariff with variable rates lower than Ofchance Price Cap for standard variable tariffs. Direct debit required. Tease and seize a play. I'm Halima Shaw and you're listening to Outside In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. Search Microplastics on TikTok and you'll get a barrage of wellness advice on detoxing them from your body. We're talking about ingredients in things like yogurt or apples. Apple pectin. Lactobacillus planterum. That has been proven to detox microplastics. We're talking about health foods, supplements. Sulfuraphane, which comes from broccoli. It's great for removing and binding to microplastics so you can move them out when you go to the bathroom. Something called psyllium husk fiber. This is basically metamucil and a classic wellness favorite. Make sure you go to your sauna three to four times a week, 20 minutes, sweat it all out. I ran these ideas by Marcus Garcia, who co-authored the study on micro and nano plastics or MNPs in the human brain. What do you make of that idea that you can poop or sweat this stuff out? In terms of the saunas, I haven't seen too much data on that. There's a lot more data. Sweating in a sauna is great for cardiovascular health, he told me. But probably not for ridding yourself of microplastics. But getting rid of them via the bathroom, there might be something to that. Some of these bigger or what we would consider microplastics might actually be just being excreted through the body and through fecal matter as well. I mean, I've seen data around, like, of course, increasing fiber in your diet may help just because it's allowing you to pass things more frequently. Now, how much of the nano material it's capturing, I think that that is still to be determined. So microplastics, maybe. Nano plastics, they could be so small they're getting absorbed by the body rather than just passing through. Dr. Garcia isn't the only person I spoke to about this. I asked a Stanford scientist who studies plastics and human health about the saunas and supplements too. And she was skeptical. She said that when the research isn't quite there, wellness solutions are a way for people to make money off of our fears. Because here's the thing with the supplements. They're not FDA regulated. These companies don't have to prove that their products work and they don't even have to prove that they're safe. But they are cheap. Or at least cheaper than the busiest treatment of them all. Let's just start with your full name and what you do. My name is Yale Cohen and I'm the CEO of Clarify Clinics. And where are you based? I'm in Los Angeles. And Clarify Clinic is well known for one procedure in particular. Can you tell me what that is? So we do one thing and one thing only and it is an aphorosis procedure. Aphorosis is a word that comes from Greek, which means to take away. And literally it's a procedure that removes your blood through a tube, puts it through a centrifuge, and separates it into different elements. The harmful components are removed and the remaining blood cells, platelets, and plasma are all pumped back into the body. An aphorosis isn't anything new. It's been used as a medical treatment for blood cancer for decades. But what is new is using it to remove microplastics, not to treat any particular symptoms, but to get these microplastics out before they might cause any. You know, when I learned about this procedure, it was through a story in the cut and you are in the cover image, smiling with some tubes hooked up to both of your arms. It kind of looks like you're getting your blood drawn and you're smiling. What does this feel like? So it's funny that you say that because we built our patient protocols around me because I am such a chicken when it comes to needles. I'm terrified of them. I don't like them. And so we make it as comfortable as possible. And during the procedure, it's quite relaxing. Interestingly, a lot of our patients end up sleeping. It probably doesn't hurt that the procedure takes up to four hours. Regardless, Yale said her sleep and anxiety has improved thanks to Clary. The name of this particular aphorysus procedure. And it's gotten a lot of press thanks to a celebrity endorsement from Orlando Blue. This is either madness or print. It's remarkable how often those tears reach current size. But what this procedure doesn't have is peer reviewed evidence showing that it works. A couple of scientists who study dialysis, a very similar procedure, have cautiously written that aphorysus could actually introduce microplastics into the blood. After all, the blood that's pumping back into you is moving through plastic tubes. And if microplastics are piling up in organs like the brain, liver or kidneys, removing them from the blood might not have the highest impact. Either way, Yale can't offer Clary to her clients in LA where she's based because it's not approved in the US. You have clinics in London, Dubai and Johannesburg. So why hasn't this procedure been approved by the FDA yet? It takes time. And the US is obviously a market of interest and that's something we're currently working on. But even if this procedure comes to the US, it's going to cost about $13,000. And insurance is not going to cover it. Not yet anyway. That's a lot of money for a lot of people. And I wonder how viable of a solution this can be to our microplastics problem if it's not available to, for example, populations who are the most affected by pollutants, which tend to be low income populations. So you're entirely correct. That is not a highly accessible price, but it's hospital grade medical procedure that's delivered by physicians and nurses in a supervised clinical setting. And so the prices reflecting that infrastructure, the technology, the medical oversight involved. But also this is new. Right. And so when we had cell phones or computers or air travel, first, they were really expensive. And it's absolutely on our radar to bring this price point down to where it's accessible to the people who need it most. But let's say that one day the FDA does approve this procedure and that the cost does come down. Can the treatment keep up with the amount of plastic we interact with on the daily? Is it possible to maintain these results when we're living and moving through a world where plastic is everywhere? So I think that's something we need a lot more research on. Is it possible to entirely avoid microplastic exposure or forever chemical exposure in our modern world? No. I think what we can do is limit exposure, you know, make meaningful changes in the ways that we can, and then reduce circulating toxic burden, which is what we're doing with Clary. Even though Yale wants Clary to be widely accessible one day, a lot will have to happen before it becomes a go to treatment. Namely, strong data to back it up. We still don't know the relationship between microplastics and disease, so it's hard to say how beneficial this procedure actually is. And on top of that, treatments like this are very individualized ways of dealing with a collective problem. The world produces almost 60 million tons of plastic pollution each year. That's hardly a problem any one person can face. Yeah, I mean, this is something that I do think the government should take the lead on. This is Sarah Marath, law professor at Wake Forest University, an author of a book called Our Plastic Problem and How to Solve It. It's a global problem and our government has not made it any easier to avoid these kinds of products, and companies aren't either. It's not like the U.S. has never regulated a once ubiquitous substance before. As I've been working on this story, I keep thinking about something I learned about in grade school. DDT, the popular insecticide that was the subject of the 1960s book Silent Spring. DDT killed birds and it was linked to cancer in humans, and it was effectively banned soon after the book came out. Could the same happen with microplastics? DDT is a specific chemical, and I think it was easier to go say we're no longer going to offer this specific chemical. Whereas there's so many different kinds of plastics, it's hard to sort of target microplastics large in a way where we could target a specific isolated chemical. So plastics aren't likely to be banned like DDT and one fell swoop. And that might not be a good thing anyway. Single-use plastics make it easy to dispose of biohazardous material in the medical sector. And it's sturdy and it's affordable and it's light, so shipping things in plastic has a lower cost in carbon footprint than maybe shipping it in glass. But finding a balance between convenience and regulation isn't easy, especially when the petroleum industry, which produces plastics, has so much power on Capitol Hill. It's sort of like a chicken and an egg kind of conversation where it's an interplay, I think, between the legislation and our court system that sort of moves the ball forward. The tobacco and lead industries had lobbyists and influence too, but they faced something that began to chip away at their power, lawsuits, and lots of them. I think we've seen it in the tobacco space and we saw it certainly in the opioid space where lawsuits really got the attention of legislatures at the federal level to enact some sort of whole-scale regulation addressing these harms that the public was facing. But again, the analogy isn't perfect. Unlike tobacco or opioids or lead, there isn't robust research proving that microplastics cause disease. So when microplastics are regulated, it's usually for showing up in places where they aren't supposed to be. There is no federal regulations apart from the Microbead Free Waters Act, which targeted microbeads in wash-off cosmetics only. Remember those colorful little beads you'd find in face and body washes? Those weren't just little exfoliating balls. They were microplastics. And after state and local governments noticed them showing up and drinking water supplies, they started passing their own bans. And in 2015, a federal ban followed suit. So what I do think happens is sometimes the federal government will say, we don't want this patchwork. We don't want some states doing something and other states not doing something. So sometimes the patchwork can spur a federal government to work. And that's actually what we saw happening with the Microbead Free Water Act. But it's one thing to ban microbeads in a specific product, especially when they can be replaced by another exfoliant like sugar or salt. It's another thing to tackle all of the plastics we use in modern society. Plastic lawn chairs, plastic laundry baskets, sleds, planters, they all have different functions, but they have similar endings. Over time, they will break down. Slowly, they'll shed pieces, break apart and get smaller and smaller. I called up Nate when I got my microplastic test results back. Hi, Nate. Hey. I got an email the other day saying that my microplastics test results are ready in the Don't Die app by Brian Johnson. So. OK, so I'm opening up the app and I'm going to go to my house. And then I have my biomarkers. I have four biomarkers and it says all four are out of range. So let's see. Oh, OK. The first three biomarkers supposedly represent microplastics of different sizes in my blood. I have some of each. The fourth biomarker is my total number of microplastics particles. The Don't Die app says I have 18 particles in a single drop of my blood. So is that a lot? I can't say. But the app tells me it's more than 65% of users who took the same test. How does it make you feel? Surprised, honestly. I really didn't think that I would. I mean, like I said, I'm a reluctantly microplastic conscious person. But also I'm not a person who would use any of Brian Johnson's services otherwise. Right? Yeah. These 2.4 K users are all people who are probably very conscious about this already measuring everything. It's a very self selecting group. Yeah. It's pretty hard to tell who I'm being compared to when I look at the app. And there's no scientifically accepted standard for what a good or bad or normal amount of microplastics in the blood is. I can see how it would panic some people. It would panic me, I think. And then I would tell myself not to take too much stock because again, it's a self selecting group. And, you know, there's one thing to be sending it off to Brian Johnson's Live Forever Company. It's another thing if you're like at a doctor with a lab. And Dr. Garcia, the scientist behind the controversial microplastics in the brain study, was skeptical too. When I mentioned that I was doing this, he said, you need at least a vial of blood for a decent test. So can we really expect a single drop of blood on a card to be accurate? Well, hey, have a good rest of your day. Thank you. And don't think too much about it. Thank you. And don't think too much about this microplastic stuff. I probably won't. I'm going to forget this happened in like five minutes. That's great. Yeah. That's perfect. I have mostly forgotten about my results. And if I'm being honest, it's not just because of my conversations with the experts. It's because I'm not sure I can keep living if I obsess over what the Don't Die app tells me. But I have gone from reluctantly plastic conscious to actually plastic conscious. I even got my mom to ditch a plastic cutting board the other day. Because the research may be incomplete, but common sense tells me eating plastic isn't great. And whether it's about my health or the health of the people I love, I don't want to wait to find out. This episode was reported and produced by Halima Shop. It was mixed by Felix Poon and edited by Taylor Quimby. I'm your host, Nate Hedgie. Our executive producer is Taylor Quimby. Rebecca LaVoy is NHPR's director of On Demand Audio. Our staff also includes Justine Paradis, Marina Hanky and Jessica Hunt. Music in this episode was by Jules Gaia, Lenin Hutton, Arthur Benson, Jari and Blue Dot Sessions. And a special thanks to Amelia Meyer, who co-leads the Plastics and Health Working Group at Stanford University. Outside In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Have you ever wondered what businesses are doing and should be doing to tackle climate change? Then check out the award-winning and chart-topping podcast, Climate Rising, produced by Harvard Business School and hosted by me, Professor Mike Toffle. Recently named one of the best environmental podcasts by Earth.org, Climate Rising shares a behind-the-scenes look at how some of the world's top entrepreneurs and business leaders are addressing climate change. From climate storytelling and marketing to AI, regenerative agriculture and beyond. Don't miss out. Follow and listen to Climate Rising wherever you get your podcasts. Do you want the truth about the organic food on your plate? 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