Plastic Podcast Episode 8 - Our Plastic Diet: Microplastics in Food Stuffs

This episode of Plastic Podcast delves into the pervasive issue of microplastics in our food. Featuring insights from Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu, a marine biologist and expert on plastic pollution, the discussion illuminates the alarming prevalence of microplastics in various food items, from seafood to staples like salt and spirulina. They explore how these tiny pollutants make their way into our meals, the potential health implications, and the broader environmental challenges posed by plastic waste. As they unravel the complexities of microplastic contamination, including its pathways and effects on human health, the episode sheds light on the urgent need for research, policy change, and individual action to mitigate this invisible threat lurking in our everyday diet.

Episode Guest: Dr. Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

Browse his publications on Research Gate .

Mikroplastik.org for more research on microplastics

Plastic People Documentary Trailer on Youtube

Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu’s book, Plastic Waste Trade, A New Colonialist Means of Pollution Transfer

More information about the episode and the Plastic Podcast

Episode Transcript  and more information on the Pine Forest Media Website

Follow Pine Forest Media on Instagram @pineforestmedia

Hosted, produced, written, and edited by Clark Marchese 

Cover art and PFM logo by Laurel Wong. 

Theme music by Tadeo Cabellos 

Transcript:

[00:00:10.200] - Clark

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Plastic Podcast, the show that tells the science and the story of our relationship with plastic. I am your host, Clark Marchese, and today we are serving science and food. Mmm, yummy, yummy, yummy plastic. All right, today we're going to be talking about how much plastic is in our food, what kinds of foods, how it gets there, what that means for us, and what we can do about it. But before we get started, we've got the Trivia Game. So the Trivia Question for today is, what do you call it when someone has the fear of peanut butter sticking to the top of their mouth. A, erachebeautyrophobia, B, globophobia, C, hippopotam and struskypetoliophobia, and D, aphebipobia. Spotify listeners can answer directly on the episode page of the app, and everyone else can DM me on Instagram at pineforestmedia for the chance to win a monthly prize. No cheating. Stick around to the end of the credits to hear the answer to last week's question and to hear a lovely review from one of you. Okay, as I said, the topic for today's episode is plastic in our food products.

[00:01:22.700] - Clark

 Sedat Gündoğdu has a number of research interests when it comes to plastic, but he has extensively published in a series of articles that seek to identify micro and nanoplastic concentrations in food items such as mussels, canned fish, spirulina, salt, and lots of others. This is in part because he is interested in how plastics enter human bodies. So he's also looked at microplastic concentrations in certain medical products and in the air. He's also a marine biologist by training and has a PhD in Fisheries Biology from Çukurova University in Turkey, and he is a published author on the subject of the neocolonial dimensions of the plastic waste trade. So yes, lots of interest having to do with plastic, but our focus for today is plastic in our food products. So let's just jump right into it. All right. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for giving your time today. The first question is if you could just tell us who you are, introduce yourself, and a bit about your research interests.

[00:02:23.760] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

Yeah, thanks for inviting me for this podcast. I'm Sedat Gindaudo, working as Marine Biologist in University of Çukurova in south of Turkey. I'm doing a research in the microplastic pollution in marine environment and also food stuffs. And all Plastic-related issues are in my focus. So currently, we are investigating microplastic pollution in soil, fresh water environment, and its transportation to the marine environment.

[00:03:00.230] - Clark

What made you get interested to study plastics?

[00:03:02.880] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

Well, it was during my PhD sampling period. I was in the field trip in the cruise, and we were trying to collect some biodiversity sample from the sea bed. And then we realized that there are more plastic than any other organism inside the travel net that we use for sampling. Then I decided to work on this because this is more interesting and real It was a real life related topic for me because I was working on fish biology for this super scientific topic, and no one other than fish biologist can really have interest, will really have interest on my PhD. Then I decided to have more society interest, pollution problem, plastic problem.

[00:03:54.090] - Clark

I'm sure your fish project was a lot more interesting than you're giving yourself credit for. But gosh, I can't imagine casting a net looking for biotic samples and then catching more plastic than anything else. But that's actually a common story among the scientists I talked to who research plastic. Maybe they didn't start out thinking that that was going to be their focus, but they just encountered so much of it that they were compelled to shift course. Nowadays, you spend a lot of time researching microplastic concentrations in food products. You've written articles identifying plastic levels in spirulina, fish meal, seafood of various kinds. Can you tell me a bit about these projects?

[00:04:28.730] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

Well, this is It's a huge project that we are investigating microplastic inside all kinds of edible seafood, like from muscle to fish to soul and other organisms we are consuming. So this is a long-run project. I mean, it's not a single-funded project that we can say as a specific name. This is a combination of small projects. We are trying to understand how microplastic get into human food chain, like human consumption, human exposure of microplastics, any food, from cheese to even Iran, maybe. You know iron? Iron is traditional Turkish one. You are mixing with yogurt and water, and putting in salt, and also some other traditional foods like stuffed muscle. In Turkey, the community do not consume muscle directly like in Europe. They are putting in some rice, stopping muscle, and then this is opening another exposure road. All this processing bus has some microplastic contamination issue. But we are not limited ourselves with investigating of food because the food is not the only way for human exposure of microplastics. But of course, one of the main one, but this is not the only one, is we have some other exposure road for microplastics.

[00:06:00.650] - Clark

Okay, so I just want to make this clear because it's possible we jumped ahead of ourselves a tiny bit. We are finding microplastics in our food. That is correct. Yes?

[00:06:08.630] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

Yeah, we are finding microplastics in any food. Any food stock that we investigate has really high number of microplastics.

[00:06:18.560] - Clark

Okay, so this may or may not be news to some listeners. I know there has been increasing research on it, but just to give some idea behind how much, perhaps. A recent study by the University of Toronto and the nonprofit group Ocean Conservancy identified plastic particles in around 90% of tested samples of protein sources. So this is both plant-based and animal-based. They looked at tofu and beef, and it's also both land-based and sea-based. They looked at chicken and shrimp as well. So it's everywhere. An example from  Gündoğdu's work on spirulina, which I have in my Greek yogurt almost every other day, has on average 13.77 plus or minus 2.45 microplastic particles per 100 grams. Okay, so you mentioned that there's a number of different pathways that microplastics can be entering our bodies. Do you know where food falls if we were able to rank the pathways through which we receive the most microplastics? Does that make sense? Are we breathing it in more Or are we eating it the most or some other source that we don't know yet?

[00:07:19.130] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

Yeah. The current knowledge that we know we have on microplastic exposure, we can make a ranking. I can say the first point is IV solutions, exposing directly through intravenous solutions like IV solutions. Because when you go to hospital for medical treatment, so they will give you some liquid to treat you. But all those liquids inside the plastic. So there is some microplastics and nanoplastics inside. The second one is food stuff. And also food stuff packaged with plastic includes microplastics. So the The fruits are the second main way. But the third way, it depends on the quality of air at the place that you live. And then your human activities around is air inhalation. Because if you are living in the crowded city, like every day, hundreds of thousands of cars going somewhere, hundreds of people working. The air also can be one of the important inhalation and the exposure exposure of microplastics.

[00:08:32.200] - Clark

Okay, so if I understand this ranking, it seems like it might be more a list of the most efficient pathways through which microplastics enter us rather than a total accumulation of microplastics throughout our lifetime. Is that correct? Because, for example, I've only had IV fluid from the hospital once when I said goodbye to my wisdom teeth, but I do eat food and drink water every day.

[00:08:54.000] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

Yeah. I'm not actually talking about the person-specific exposure. I'm talking the concentration.

[00:09:01.890] - Clark

Okay, got it. Also, one distinction I want to make is the difference between consumption and absorption, which I know your research focuses on as well. Let's say that there's 100 nanoplastics in your tuna and you eat all of the tuna, how much of that that enters your body actually gets absorbed?

[00:09:22.080] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

Most of the microplastics that we eat is not staying in our body because of the size and because of the intestinal activities. We are sending it through the waste water stream. It depends the size of the microplastic can enter the body. Of course, you are eating them, but they are not passing all these barriers that we have. But in the blood directly injected will stay in your body, your blood.

[00:09:53.570] - Clark

Okay. So is the amount that gets absorbed dependent on the pathway through which it entered our bodies? So let's take food, for example, because that's an area where all of us are consuming these microplastics. Are we able to generalize what percentage of microplastics in our food actually get absorbed?

[00:10:08.740] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

It depends on size, so we cannot say. But the latest research is on nanoplastics, which is smaller than one micron. It's like 100 times smaller than a millimeter. So they can easily pass all the barrier. It depends how much, how many of them get a chance to touch with your intestinal barrier. I cannot make an estimation for this, but it depends on the size.

[00:10:37.780] - Clark

Let's talk about how microplastics is getting into our foods. Does your research touch on that at all? We learned in episode 2 with Abby Barrows that secondary microplastics are those that shed off of plastic products like packaging, so that could be one source. But she also taught us about biomagnification and bioaccumulation as a result of plastic, which basically means that the concentrations grow along each step of the food chain. Are these the main entry points? Are there others?

[00:11:04.350] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

Yeah. Well, the source in food is not starting with the packaging. As you said, it can be a result of biomagnification. We have much bigger issues than biomagnification, like plastic usage in agriculture, because for some cultivation method, the farmers using a really massive amount of plastics. They are covering all the soil, and then it's not even removed because of the sunlight exposure. When sunlight exposed to plastics, it makes plastics more fragile. And then when you try to remove from the soil, then it is turning into microplastic easily and nanoplastics. And those nanoplastics can easily penetrate inside the plant. If you eat two tomatoes per day, it means that you will eat It's 13 number of microplastic per tomato. It depends on how many fruit or vegetables that you consume a day. So all things are started in the production part. I'm talking about the terrestrial agriculture production. But in the marine environment, the story is completely different.

[00:12:21.840] - Clark

I think the takeaway there is not to eat fewer tomatoes or fewer vegetables or things that grow from the ground, because if you are eating animals, the animals will eat the things grow from the ground. Then the same biomagnification we see in the sea will happen on land as well. But that also leads me to my next question, because a lot of the studies that you have done looking at specific food items are seafood items. Are we finding that seafood products have a much higher risk of contamination of plastics than other items?

[00:12:47.450] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

Yeah, it depends on the sea water. That's the main reason. If someone were contaminated with something, and then anything in that place which consume or leering together with that area, definitely contaminated plastic. Mostly these muscles because they are filtering, filtering water. They are most exposed to plastic inside the sea water.

[00:13:16.610] - Clark

Okay, that makes sense because Abby Barrow also reminded us that the ocean is not one homogenous place. Ocean depths and ocean currents can affect microplastic concentration. So that means that the organisms that live in those places with higher concentrations in water will perhaps have higher concentrations inside of them. And also it seems that it can depend on the organism itself if it has a specific feature, like a filter feeding system.

[00:13:40.130] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

It's a fact that we know most of the seafood are contaminated with microplastics. But when we compare among the seafood, the mussels, the first one, then fish and other organisms, because the filter feelings has more microplastics than other monitor organisms, and also sea salt.

[00:14:02.690] - Clark

Okay. I hadn't thought about sea salt. Oh, gosh. Being a vegetarian will not save you. I am a vegetarian, by the way.

[00:14:10.280] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

Yeah, because you are directly extracting the salt from evaporating the water inside. You will have some residue. Sea salt actually as a residue of sea water. But still, we don't know the exact procedure of this microplastic transfer over sea salt because it's not limited with sea. Also, Lake salt has similar problem.

[00:14:37.370] - Clark

Tell me, some places in the world, some countries rely more heavily than others on seafood as a food staple. Do we see any measurable impact of this on microplastic concentrations in humans?

[00:14:48.910] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

No, we cannot say this because still it's an ongoing. We need more comprehensive researches to make comparison.

[00:14:58.350] - Clark

Okay, got it. So for all the out there, that's where we need some research. Now, there's microplastics in the ocean, in the air, in the soil, in the food. We know this. My question is, what is the general public supposed to do now with this information?

[00:15:12.530] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

Well, there's very limited You cannot choose some part of the consumption culture that you are in. You can choose, of course, you can choose some non-plastic package foods, but it's really limited and also expensive. And Also in some parts, you don't have a chance to choose what you eat because you don't know what's the behind in the kitchen, kitchen of this consumption culture. For instance, when you go to restaurant, they use plastic cutting board and preparing all things on this plastic cutting board and then cooking and then serving to you. But you never know because the regulations, sometimes regulations, they mandate usage of plastics in the restaurants and other areas. So there will be microplastic around you, and then you will inhale or you will breathe, or you will eat, or et cetera. So choosing non-plastic alternatives is an option, but still it deserves to be high-level presentation. I mean, like a reduction in the production of plastics, like banning single-use plastics, banning And intentionally added microplastics in the personal key products, for instance, or using plastics in every food sector. It should be definitely limited.

[00:16:41.740] - Clark

Okay. So if there's not much that the average person can do, and also we already know it's there. Tell me why we need to keep finding out the answers to these questions. Why is this research important?

[00:16:51.840] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

So showing these evidences will guide to policy makers to eliminate this plastic in inside our exposure route. So that's one of the main aim of this investigation. The second one is we are trying to understand what will happen if we expose the plastics because plastic is not a solid material. I mean, It's a single material. It's like a hundred different type of plastics that we have in our daily life. Also, there are hundreds of thousands of chemicals inside. Last week, there was a report, a list from My plus Group reported that there are 16,000 different chemicals inside plastics, and 400 of them are highly toxic and hazardous and has carcinogenic and disrupting our induction system. We don't know any information about 10,000 of them. We don't have enough information to make evaluation. So we are trying to provide this information to make better evaluation of this chemicals and plastics.

[00:18:10.290] - Clark

Okay, so then switching to talk about the way absorbing microplastics affects us. I know there's a lot of questions that are unanswered, but do you know what answers we do have? What do we know about how microplastics are affecting us when we absorb them? Does your research focus on that at all?

[00:18:26.090] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

Yeah, we are a growing body of science on this. Last Last week, there was another study published. It was about the heart attack related with the amount of microplastic that we have in our bloodstream. There is a strong positive correlation between this The two things. If you have more plastic in your blood, and then it means that you will have higher risk than people who don't have microplastic inside their bloodstream. The first thing. The second thing is we We have clear connection with the chemicals inside the plastics, has connection with Parkinson, Demetria, and some other cancers, and also hormone-related illness. We cannot make a statement only for plastic. We have to mention also chemicals. When we talk about chemicals, we are living in the chemical age, and we also have cancer pandemia because of those chemicals.

[00:19:31.780] - Clark

Okay, just as an aside, these are just some of the known effects of some of the chemicals associated with plastic. There are so many unanswered questions, and this is a bit of a spoiler, but the topic for next week's episode is dedicated to a categorical study to uncover what we do not know about plastic consumption and how it's impacting our health. So make sure you have subscribed to the show wherever you're listening to this. This leads me to a question about one specific example about how plastics are affecting our health, but it's not necessarily the plastic itself. There's a quote that I pulled from one of your articles, and it said microplastics could induce the production of phycotoxins, which accumulate in seafood. Can you explain that?

[00:20:12.510] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

Yeah, I'm not that much an expert of this because in that paper, we are sharing the parts between the researchers. But in the in the general knowledge on the biology of the animal, the organism. So If microplastics and other, how can I say, non-indigenius or alien particles for the body, so it will definitely have an effect of some mechanism. So one of them are the production of toxins and other things.

[00:20:49.640] - Clark

Okay, so this is a not-so-fun fact about plastics. Here's the quote from the article. Moreover, microplastics could induce the production of phycotoxins, diuretic and paralytic shellfish poisoning, which accumulate in seafood and transfer to humans via consumption, adversely affecting human health. So even if it's not the plastics or the chemical associated with plastics themselves in our food that's causing a problem, these things, in addition, can affect our food in ways that end up being harmful for human health. So we're talking about fish. Basically, they can make the fish sick, which can make us sick. I'm wondering, has your research prompted any changes in your personal dietary choices?

[00:21:27.450] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

Yeah, of course. When I first thought When I started to investigate microplastics, then I subsequently left to use plastic bottles because the first research that we make, we start to investigate microplastics inside the bottle of water We found many particles inside. We haven't published it, but it was that excursion for students. Then I saw this amount of alien particles inside a really clear water. Then I thought that I should quit to drink water inside the bottle. This was the first personal behavioral change in my daily life. And then I reduced the plastic exposure of my body in my daily life. So I left the plastic bags, I left the single-use plastics when I order something from restaurants. Then I perpare it myself when I go to the shopping, I prepared reusable cups and reusable bags, non-plastic, of course. I changed most of them from plastic to metal and glass.

[00:22:43.610] - Clark

Okay. Do you think Do you think that if we had legislation that mirrored these personal changes that you have made, do you think that would actually be an effective way to mitigate against plastic concentrations in our food and subsequently that get absorbed, or is that not even enough?

[00:22:57.440] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

There should definitely be some restriction. The usage of plastics, because otherwise the personal behavioral change will not have any substantial effect on our exposure to plastics. So for instance, we should eliminate all unnecessary plastics that we used in our of the production system. First thing, we should think about degrowth. Now, degrowth is like being smaller or reducing exposure of plastics. Otherwise, if we continue in this consumption culture way, it definitely will not have a clear and wide future.

[00:23:39.600] - Clark

So degrowth is an economic concept that advocates for the reduction of a country's gross domestic product or GDP. The idea behind degrowth is that continuous economic growth and increased consumption are unsustainable and lead to environmental degradation, resource depletion, and social inequalities. Now, at least in the United States, GDP has a positive relationship with shareholder profits if they are not closely synonymous. It's very unpopular to a lot of billionaires who might tell you that it would result in societal disarray, but we have to consider what the alternative of the status quo will bring about. Therefore, degrowth proponents argue for a deliberate downscaling of economic activities to reduce the ecological footprint, promote social equity, and enhance overall well-being. Okay, we are going to start to wrap up the episode, but one question I like to ask towards the end is, is there one piece of good news that's come out recently in your field of research that you can share with us?

[00:24:33.170] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

Yeah, currently there is an ongoing negotiation in United Nations. So the United Nations and the parties and the governments negotiating on the binding plastic treaty to end plastic pollution. So if this instrument has a legally binding option, it means that we will have a clear future.

[00:24:57.990] - Clark

Yes, listeners of the show will have heard of treaty a couple of times by now, but we are following it with watchful eye. The last question is, is there anything that we did not discuss today that you think is important to mention in a conversation about the health implications of microplastics or their concentrations in our food?

[00:25:14.170] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

Yeah, well, we should talk about a bit a secondary exposure of microplastics. You can change your behavior to avoid to expose microplastics. But if the people living around you, if they use plastics, if they continue to use plastics, you will definitely face a side effect of their plastic usage. We should also talk about this waste management system because recycling or energy recovery of waste are not the silver balance for managing this amount of pollution. We should definitely make pressure on our decision-makers.

[00:25:58.960] - Clark

Yeah, and that That doesn't just apply locally, right? We're all here living on this planet, and the high-consuming countries are definitely impacting the rest of the world. I hope that's something that the Plastics Treaty can address as well. Okay, the last question is, where can people find you and follow your work?

[00:26:14.200] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

We are now working on the microplastics in brain tissues, cancer brain tissues, and also broadcasting in a documentary, Plastic People. If the listener has a chance to see this This documentary, they will definitely understand holistically because the documentary is showing the evidence of microplastic and plastic exposure to human in all their life. Currently, I published a We have a Facebook, Plastic Waste Trade, a colonialist means of Pollution Transfer. Anyone interested, they can easily access on the internet. We also have microplastic. Org, our organization website. It's not Lidci, microplastic. Lidci, microplastic. It's ci, microplastic. It's like a German and Turkish.

[00:27:06.140] - Clark

Okay. Well, I'll definitely include some links in the episode description to all of those things. I want to say thank you so much for your time today. I learned a lot from this discussion, and I really appreciate you coming on the show.

[00:27:15.950] - Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

[00:27:26.690] - Clark

Now, there's plastic in all of our food. There's plastic in our air all around us. What's the takeaway here? I think it's not to panic because I don't think that's helpful, but I do think it's to act. So Pine Forest Media has a couple of podcast series. One of them is called Something in the Water. And the host of that show, Elaina Berg, did an episode on plastic in our drinking water, and she interviewed  Sherry Mason, who discovered and quantified microplastic concentrations in tap water around the world. You can find that episode in the show notes, but her takeaway was not to be alarmed, but to view it as a canary in the coal mine, she said. At least in tap water, Sherry Mason tells us, levels are not extremely disastrous yet, but they are concerning. It's really important to be aware of the work being done by both  Sherry Mason, Looking at Water, and  Sedat Gündoğdu, who we spoke with today, because their work really can be used to put pressure on policymakers, because getting plastic out of our lives in whatever way we can is ultimately how we get it out of our food and out of our water.

[00:28:29.880] - Clark

Now, before we close out, this episode was meant to show a link between plastic and human consumption. We didn't really go deep into what the effects of that are, partly because one thing at a time, but also because we really don't know.  Gündoğdu pointed out a few studies that have been done, but getting to the bottom of what we do and do not know about plastic and how it affects human health is the entire topic of next week's episode. I'm going to talk to three scientists who worked as a team to aggregate every single study ever done in English that links plastic and its associated chemicals to human health outcomes. I hope you join me next week. You can subscribe so you don't miss it and hear all about that project and learn about our current state of knowledge about plastics in human health. All right, that's all I have for today. Thanks, guys. You've been listening to Plastic Podcast. You can find more information about this week's guest and links to their work in the episode description. Next week, I'll be speaking with a team of scientists at the Minderoo Foundation about their project called the Plastic Health Map.

[00:29:36.990] - Clark

Cover art for the show was done by Laurel Wong, and the music you're listening to was done by Tadeo Kbezos. I am your host, Clark Marchese, and this episode was written, engineered, and produced by me. So if you loved it, I will not only see you here next week, but I would really appreciate a five-star rating across platforms and a review on Apple Podcasts. Plastic Podcasts is part of a larger network of sciencey podcasts called Pine Forest Media. You can find more information about us in the episode description as well, or at pineforestpods.com, or on Instagram at Pineforest Media, and we are now on TikTok @pineforestmedia. We've got some exciting science podcast coming out this year, and that review I was talking about really helps the entire network to grow. All right. Thanks to all of you who have made it this far. And a special thank you to Ms. Kessley Blets, who says, One of the most thoughtfully researched and engaging podcasts I've listened to in a long time. Thank you, Kessley. All right. Now for the answer to last week's Trivia Question. The name of the first ever animal to be cloned was dolly.

[00:30:39.500] - Clark

And Dolly was a sheep. So she did not have flaming locks of auburn hair, bless her heart. Just a hair of a different color, but it hurts just the same.