Microplastics may be Poisoning You! 11 Solutions
Channel: Nicholas Norwitz PhD
Date: 2024-03-11

Paper: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2309822 

0:00 - New Microplastics Paper in NEJM!
 0:47 - Methods 
1:15 - Results 
3:08 - 11 Solutions to reduce exposure 

*A criticism of the data in this paper will be that they are "associative." This was an "observational" trial, not an RCT. Technically, causality isn't proven. However, it's important to keep in mind that (1) You can't do an RCT on this topic with hard outcomes... you can't randomize a group a humans to microplastics exposure and then monitor for the outcomes of heart attack, stroke and death. (2) These data are consistent with prior work and have biological plausibility, i.e. there are data that microplastics can induce an inflammatory and immune response, signs of which we also see in this paper with the increase in immune cell activation markers and inflammatory cytokines (3) In general, the "cost" to reducing microplastics is inconvenience at most. If you choose to drink filtered tap water out of your own stainless steel bottle, rather than bottled, at absolute worst you get negligible health benefit and that water bottle doesn't end up in the ocean as pollution. 


Beat the microbead: https://www.beatthemicrobead.org/guide-to-microplastics/
PFAS free: https://pfascentral.org/pfas-free-products/
My favorite plastic-free tea company: https://yogiproducts.com/all-teas/