According to the latest consumer reports, a chemical known as the late so common in our food, it might as well be considered an ingredient, but you don't see the word they usually on any list like this because according to a local researcher, those who create plastic products don't have to disclose all they used to create this. That's something Kara Wigan hopes to change. As she works to advocate for more transparency, we have this chemical burden in our food that humans may not know that they're being exposed to every day. Kara Wiggin is a researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Her focus on plastics. It's been really fascinating, very frustrating and it's finally getting the attention she believes it deserves. Ka recently went to Dubai with a team from San Diego to speak on the topic at the UN Climate change conference. As plastic in our environment gains recognition for all the wrong reasons. They really are toxic. We don't even really know how toxic they truly are. She's referring to thal lights found in many plastics. Basically, these are plasticizers which are chemicals that are put into plastic to make them more flexible, which is often what our food products are wrapped in the plasticizers help make plastic, do things like this be really flexible, bendy your oat milk, Greek yogurt, you'll see it in peanut butter, even things like fruits and vegetables wrapped in this type of plastic. These chemicals are actually not molecularly bound to the plastic, which means they're not sort of attached to the molecular structure that makes up the plastic, which means they can just free float. Take this box of Cheerios, for example, it has this plastic bag inside the cardboard box. Now because of this plastic bag, according to consumer reports, a serving of Cheerios has about 11,000 nanograms of palates. So I did some math here if you have a bowl of cereal every day for 10 years, that will equal about 40 million grams of THS that's about 40 mg that equals about 40 grains of salt, which may not sound like much at all. But consider this. That latest report also says there are thys in most packaged foods. There is a bit of good news. Our body can process metabolize and get rid of these chemicals pretty fast. I think some studies say about two days, but the not so good news is we're exposed every day and nearly all we do. So our body doesn't have the chance to clear plastics out of our system. And now studies show they hurt our health. What we know for sure is that they're decreasing male fertility over time, especially when you're exposed through your entire life. Cara points out it's especially important to reduce exposure to babies since they're most sensitive to reproductive changes. The US is phasing out bates from children's toys. So at least that's something legislation around the world really needs to ban them or at least start phasing them down. And now these plasticizers, they're not just in our food, they're in our beauty products too. Yeah. All this bendy plastic, they late lotion makeup shampoo has this in it right now. Researchers are working on alternatives to plasticizers. But in the meantime, you can consider buying things in bulk, for example, or from farmers markets instead of packaged foods. Or if you do need to get packaged food, glass, silicone, those things reusable, they're better. They don't have the plastic that's free floating and coming off into the product itself. It's good to know some of the baby products out there. Are they free? Those companies understand the risks involved. But as we are phasing out right out of children's products, but as adults, I mean, once you're what age five and up, you're exposed to it so many ways and there's snack food, everything, those companies are just trying to get mass products out as quickly as possible. It probably took until more recently to become known how impactful it was on our health. I mean, it's, it's so hard for uh a lot of these chemists to figure out what's even in the packaged products. So they don't disclose that what they're using to create these types of things. So even figuring out what is it, what, how does it impact does, takes so long. So we're now finally seeing things we've been doing for decades are heard. It's like nanograms and it seems very small. But when you put that, that amount in your hand, you're like, that's plastic. Think about that over and over and over again. You know, the reason why those farmers markets are so great and same thing, like when you're eating processed foods, those are foods that are more likely to be packaged in plastic. It is more convenient. I get it. I mean, we have kids packaged food is what I get for snacks, but keep it in mind just something to try to adjust in your daily routine. Yeah. Keep that in mind and water bottles every day. Right. Ok. Uh.
