The Hidden Plastic Inside Us (And Why It’s Rising Fast) (#292)

Lynn Thoman· Host0:00

[chime] Scientists have found plastic in human hearts, blood, lungs, placentas, and even brains. We've created a material that never truly disappears. It just gets smaller and smaller until it ends up inside us. What is that doing to our health? And is there any way out? Hi, everyone. I'm Lynn Tolman, and this is Three Takeaways. On Three Takeaways, I talk with some of the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, newsmakers, and scientists. Each episode ends with three key takeaways to help us understand the world, and maybe even ourselves, a little better. Today, I'm excited to be with Dr. Matthew Campen. He's a professor at the University of New Mexico and the director of the New Mexico Center for Metals in Biology and Medicine. He's a toxicologist, and his research is changing how we think about plastic as a public health threat. His team developed a new way to measure plastic particles hundreds of times smaller than the width of a human hair, and what they found is alarming. They detected microplastics in every human brain they tested. Even more disturbing, brain tissue from people with dementia contained up