Plastic Chemicals - A Toxic Relationship and How We Can Start Fixing It

[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to Plastic here, the podcast on Plastics, People, and the Planet. My name is Anja Kriga. In this episode, we're taking a deep dive into plastic chemicals and their impacts on human and environmental health. You'll learn why it's not such a good idea to put plastic containers into your dishwasher. And why fatty food is especially prone to absorbing chemicals from food packaging. We're also discussing a common and mostly misunderstood mantra of toxicology, the claim that it's always the dose that makes the poison. Well, it turns out that that's not always true. We're looking at how some chemicals in plastics can hack our hormone systems, how the political regulation of chemicals is not sufficient, and what we can do about it. In short, we're taking a look at our toxic relationship with plastics and chemicals, why it affects some people more than others, and how we can start fixing it. My guests are Martin Wagner, Professor of Biology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, and Jane Monke, managing director and chief scientific officer at the Food Packaging Forum. We met on the sidelines of the Plastics 3D negotiations in Geneva a month ago. So here comes our conversation. What we often hear in the public discourse is that plastics are toxic, right? And I was wondering, is that really toxic? Like a poison could be toxic? So what does that really mean that plastics are toxic? You are both biologists, ecotoxicologists. So you are working on how substances can influence biological organisms, right? So what is it that makes plastic toxic? Or can we even say that in this simple way? So I would start maybe with a very brief explainer, first of all, toxicity is very well defined, of course, in science. And plastics can induce toxicity by two major ways, right? So the first way is what we call physical toxicity, or particle toxicity. And that's why we speak about micro-nano plastics. And the second dimension of that plastic toxicity is then, of course, the chemical dimension where we talk about chemicals leading from plastics that then disrupt biological systems, including humans, and have adverse effects on them. So how are we affected by using plastics and plastic pollution? Because obviously, we're all using plastic in all areas of our lives, and we're still alive. So one way that we get exposed to plastic chemicals is when they leach from food packaging, for example, or from other kinds of food contact materials, like gene processing, food production, so to say. Plastics are not in-eart materials. And that means that they can let go of their chemical components, which end up in food. That's what we describe with the technical term of migration. It's basically leakage, but it can also happen through off-gassing, for example, of chemicals. So these plastic chemicals can move around, basically, and they can get into food. We know there's about 1,400 of these plastic food contact chemicals that have been measured found in humans. So there's quite reliable evidence, I would say, that this is a phenomenon that is affecting people everywhere worldwide on a daily basis. That's, I think, one of the main ways where we also know, to a certain extent, at least, for some of the chemicals, what the health impacts are. And of course, we get the release of micronutrients, again, from the normal and intended use of food contact materials, like food packaging. So when you unscrew a bottle cap, when you tear open packaging, those are all releases, potential releases of micronutrients, which can get into food. And then, of course, potentially harming human health. Can you give us some more examples? What food is especially at risk of getting exposed to microplastics through packaging? So I'm concerned, actually, a lot also about reusable plastic containers. So I know that we're all trying to make an effort to switch away from single-use plastics and trying to set up reuse systems, which is great. But we need materials in these reuse systems that are inert and plastics are not inert. So when you see plastic containers that look scratchy and old and maybe the color has changed, those are the ones that will be most prone to releasing microplastics. As soon as you've got cracks on the surface, that's when the microplastics come out, even if you just rinse or you add some liquids. But it's also the chemicals. So it's high temperatures, which lead to this migration of chemicals. It's fat content because plastic, a lot of the majority of plastic chemicals are fat soluble. And specifically for the micronutrient plastics, it's exposure to UV light. So UV light, sunlight, you leave plastics in the sun, maybe a water bottle, you will get migration of micronutrient plastics. So you say fat food. So I would think of cheese. And yeah, those things. Or even it doesn't have to be a very high fat content. Oil, of course, that's 100% fat content. But also things like cakes, where you have a bit of fat, butter or whatever you put in your cake. It starts at about 25% fat content of the food. It can be liquid or solid food. You will get virtually all the chemicals that are small enough to migrate. And then a fat soluble will be in the food after a certain period of time. And you also mentioned temperature, right? I've read that like micro-waving plastics is problematic and also to put these reusable containers in a dishwasher. Yeah, I would not put plastics in a dishwasher. I wouldn't do that because that will accelerate the weathering and aging. And then you will really get micro-plastics. Just because of this aggressive chemistry of diswashing detergents. Micro-waving, there's some mixed studies about whether the micro-waves actually accelerating migration or if it's just temperature dependent. So I think as a rule of thumb, it's a good idea not to put hot food into plastics, whether you're heating it in a microwave or you pouring something that's hot already into plastic container. Yeah. Great. That's a good rule of thumb. Thank you. Martin, you've done quite some studies on the number of chemicals that can be present in plastics and also what we know about them. And I think you just did like an updated version of that, right? So tell us about that. Right. So one of the big questions I think that everybody's grappling with, at least in for scientists studying chemicals in plastics as I do, is like how many chemicals are there in plastics, right? And there have been a bunch of previous scientific studies on that. We do have a bunch of resources from governments who have compiled evidence or lists of chemicals that can be used in plastics intentionally. But overall, like that evidence is quite fragmented. And it's dispersed in multiple studies and papers and some lists, et cetera. So what we've did recently was compiling all that evidence from these diverse sources, the scientific literature, but also government sources to figure out how many chemicals do we know of in plastics, right? And these are, as you said, chemicals that can potentially be present in plastic. And that's important because there is no ground truth because the plastics manufacturers really don't disclose which chemicals are actually used or have been used in the past intentionally in plastics. And on top of that, we have the big issue of what we call non-intentionally added substances. And that's a very bulky term. We call them niose for short. And these are all kinds of chemicals that are not intentionally used in plastics, not put in there with an intention, non-deless, they're present. Can be contaminants from the production, can be reaction by products from the polymerization, making the material, et cetera, can be degradation products when you microwave plastics, for instance. So we took on this task of compiling all the evidence we had into what we call the plus-comment-ventory or plus-com database. And we ended up with more than 16,000 chemicals that can potentially be present in plastics. Most of them are known to be intentionally used. But we also found a bunch of so-called niers from the scientific literature. And I think the bottom line of that compilation is indeed, it's quite many chemicals that can be potentially present in plastics. And that represents an issue for science because studying 16,000 chemicals and the toxicity, for instance, of these chemicals is a very daunting task. But it's also an issue for policymakers, for regulators, and for consumers. Because they cannot make sure that all these chemicals are safe to use in food contact materials, for instance. So I think our report really sheds a light on the challenges that we're facing and I would like to emphasize those challenges are mainly because manufacturers don't disclose which chemicals they put in the plastics we use on a daily basis. So we tried our best to compile all the publicly available evidence but yeah there's certainly more to be done in terms of transparency. So there are 16,000 chemicals that can be present in plastic products and over 4,000 of them are known to be problematic and then there's also a huge number that is just not researched well enough right that's what your plastic-cam report shows. When we think of poison we always think of this saying you know the dose makes the poison right. I've heard that that's not always the case. I know that there's like one group of very well understood chemicals. Could you tell me more about endocrine disrupting chemicals and how they relate to plastics and why they are so why they are so problematic also for human health. So I would start by you know thinking about the dogma of the dose makes the poison right and I think it's important that it dates back to an alchemist working in the 15th century if I recall correctly called paracelsus right and of course it's kind of common sense if you think about it right so if you drink like 20 liters of water that's of course having like detrimental effects on your health as compared to a glass of water etc. So it intuitively makes sense but there's striking research that happened to emerge I would say in the 1970s and 80s on certain chemicals where the dose does not make the poison and such that more dose doesn't do more damage and these are called endocrine disrupting chemicals. So these are chemicals basically that mess up your hormone system or the hormone system of other animals than humans by hijacking for instance hormone receptors but also by affecting the synthesis of the hormones that we need for our health, for our physiology and by disrupting those processes by disrupting hormone signaling and living organisms they have all kinds of effects on our development on reproduction etc. And what appeared in the research on those endocrine disrupting chemicals is that at very low doses they have very different adverse effects than in high doses and that kind of defies that dogma of the dose makes the poison because you cannot just simply rely on the idea oh you test the very high concentration of those chemicals and you don't see the adverse effect you're looking for when you're not making sure you also test the low doses where this could actually occur in organisms. So that basically kind of challenges that notion of you know let's just look at high concentrations let's do some safety testing and then we're absolutely certain that lower concentrations don't do any adverse effects and that's why that kind of paradigm has come under criticism and I would say it would need to be reconsidered given the evidence. Yeah I think that the dose makes the poison is probably one of the top misquoted statements it's the central tenet of toxicology it's why we're in this problem that we have today that we actually have way too many synthetic chemicals in our lives and we simply don't we can't manage them the complexity but just to get nerdy it for a little moment because paracels is actually someone that I'm very fond of I think he's he's really misunderstood he was tinkering around as Martin said 16th century giving people mercury to treat syphilis and he got attacked for that because there was saying oh you know you poisoning these people everyone knows mercury is toxic da da da and then he said there's no such thing that is without poison only the dose determines whether thing is a poison or not and that got flipped into the dose makes the poison right so he was trying to cure people from disease he was not trying to increase the profit margin of multi-national corporates but they hijacked this of course and the dose makes the poison has unfortunately been the assumption for the last 60 years for chemicals leaching from food contact materials meaning that oh if there's just a tiny little bit that's leaching up we don't have to worry about it and that's why we got to the problem we have now there's over 15,000 food contact chemicals some of those are plastic but of course we also have chemicals that leach from paper that leach from metal coatings and so on and so forth and we have not been able to assess the safety of each and every of those chemicals and we will not be able we cannot go chemical by chemical we have to acknowledge that there's such a thing as mixture toxicity we're not exposed to one substance at a time but that's exactly what the current regime of chemical risk assessment is kind of deals with one substance at a time the dose makes the poison ignoring as Martin said these phenomena of endocrine disruption trying to back pedal on strict policies that we used to have on carcinogens for example where we also assume that there are no thresholds for chemicals that are carcinogenic and mutagenic and even now we see attempts sneaky attempts from vested interests to even back pedal on that so I think what we need is a intervention to deal with this toxic relationship that we have now if I may use that term here for how industry is influencing our chemicals assessment and management we got to break up from that break up with that toxic relationship or at least like see each other less often I think we need to talk and we need to have real commitments to make things better and again you know it's oftentimes like this confrontation between oh we won't save for more sustainable materials products business models and then you'll hear people say well which world you live in we have to kind of keep the economy going right I think the narrative has taken complete overhand right now that economy is the one and only thing that matters excuse me the economy was developed to serve people to make people's lives better we have a big time market failure right now on many different levels with all the subsidies that go into plastic production the tax cuts I mean one could even go so far and look at the common agricultural program with subsidies into unsustainable production of foods over production of foods destroying natural resources not thinking about future generations discounting the future for the sake of short-term profit maximization and you know I'm not I'm not I'm not kind of trying to become like an anti-capitalist spokesperson here I just think we have opportunity for innovation if those players that are benefiting from the current system are willing to change and that's why I think the toxic relationship matter for here is actually quite suitable because this the only constant in life is change we cannot hang on to a system that is failing us failing our health failing communities failing the workforce and so on and so forth we have to take back control as human beings and and really think about why do we have an economy it's it's not to make those little green dollar bills proliferate even more it's fast to have a good quality of life right and then we can come together and talk about what's our shared vision where do we want to be as human beings as part of nature on this planet so we need therapy well well I wouldn't comment on the need for therapy I think there's there's plenty but I would I would like what we need is change and I would like to circle back to where that kind of toxic relationship originated and that is the reluctance of plastic producers to change right and so there's two means in my in my perspective by which they are defending their products and have done since the dawn of the plastic age in the 1950s and one is to what I call colonize the scientific community right so the plastic industry and the petrochemical industry was fundamental in creating learned societies scientific societies that deal with toxicology and that enabled them to set the agenda of scientific discourse right from the start and they did so with a very specific purpose not to promote science and to know more about toxicology but they were concerned in the 1950s with Richard Carson's book Science Spring coming out that pesticides would come under pressure and come under scrutiny so one strategy they use right from the start is to colonize the scientific community to get their talking points into set the agenda and we're seeing that till today the second strategy was even I would say more insidious and that's what's called manufacturing doubt right so right from the beginning of concerns over petrochemicals and a little bit of a plastic. manufacturers made sure that the science is a question by, you know, producing counter-evidence that they funded by attacking scientists, intimidating scientists, etc. So these are the main two main kind of pathways they used to defend products that they knew were unsustainable and new, they were unsafe right from the start. And what we do need is maybe therapy, but we really need that industry to be open to change, designing better products, stop defending their bad products and bad chemicals, stop attacking scientists, intimidating scientists, manufacturing doubt about the science of plastics and chemicals and plastics. And we need them to invest their capacity, their money into making better plastics. That's crystal clear to me. But changing minds isn't something that happens easily. So maybe some therapy session is warranted. Yeah, and with, with impacts, right, I just want to mention this study that, that you were part of that looked at the impact on health that plastics are already having. Maybe we can just give a quick summary of that of what was, in fact, the results of decades of not producing change or going through therapy. Well, the health impacts occur across the entire life stages of plastic, starting with extraction of fossil carbon, industrialized processes, cracking and so on. And fracking also, which has become one of the feedstocks for plastic, where, where groundwater and drinking water for communities is contaminated with, with toxic chemicals, exposes during the production, but also, uh, fence line communities that are hugely massively affected by leakage from poorly maintained industrial complexes, um, getting into the air, shutting down schools on a regular basis. Some communities with tenfold the cancer rates of, of the national average. Um, it's, it's, this is really an important aspect. Um, but then, of course, also the exposures during the use phase, car tires, as we all know, are made to allow cars to accelerate and break safely. But what happens during those actions is that there's a abrasion of micro tiny micron nanoplastics from the car tires which go into the air. And so, in halatory exposure to micron nanoplastics is a huge exposure issue. It's very difficult to kind of attribute the number of lung cancer cases, for example, to micro plastic being inhaled, just to give a random example. Um, but we're seeing increasing evidence in, in that direction that, that these things are linked and matter, um, or the immune system being affected by micron nanoplastics. Um, I think the strongest evidence we have are, are on a handful, or even less than a handful of chemicals, uh, between, or a being one of them, uh, DHP diethylhexyl thallate, uh, another one, and then, um, PIFOA, perfluoctanoic acid, where we actually have, um, sadly, I have to say, probably the best epidemiological evidence on how this chemical at low levels, via drinking water impacts human health from, um, a really criminally mismanaged, disposal of, of the chemical in, in the United States, near a manufacturing plant, where, uh, it leaked into the groundwater that was supplying a community with 70,000 people with drinking water, and so the levels in the drinking water were very, very low. But those low levels led to, uh, incredible disease burden, ranging from ulcerative colitis, which is a risk factor for colon cancer, kidney cancer, testicular cancer, and a whole bunch of other confirmed, strongly associated diseases. And then, also, what I want to just point out here is that the way we test chemicals today, again, or as assuming the stoves make supposin, we are ignoring that it's also the timing that makes supposin. So exposures during fetal development, exposures of the pregnant mother, um, that reach the fetus during development can have detrimental effects even at very low levels. There again, are these hormone hacking chemicals, these endocrine disruptors. What we also are seeing are increased incidence rates of certain cancers and younger people. Again, colon cancer is one of them breast cancer, of course, on the rise to sticular cancer, liver cancer rates are going up. So these are all indicators that what we are doing right now to manage chemicals in our societies is not working. At least it's not working for the people. It may be working well for those that are making nice profits. But the bottom line of the Lancet countdown report that was published in August 2025 is that we have about $1.5 trillion US dollars in external health costs that arise to society. And, you know, it's always a little bit cold to just talk about costs. These are human beings that could be healthy. They're not healthy. They have to seek medical help. They have to, you know, consume pharmaceuticals and all of that cash is in as GDP. And to me, that is the ultimate cynicism here that, you know, we don't have an economic incentive actually for prevention of these diseases because it helps our economy to grow and thrive. If people are sick, then yeah, there will request services. Healthy people that are free from anxiety, free from disease are consuming less. So I think again, I'm really turning into a spokesperson here, anti-capitalist. I'm not an anti-capitalist, but I do think that we have to deal with market failure. This is a clear sign of market failure. And the economy is not working for people right now. If these are the values that we strive for, namely increased GDP, and we reach that by getting people sick. Right. Do you have something to add, Martin? So I do think it's important, you know, to really put in focus the economic costs and losses that are caused by plastics. As Jane said, but I also think like it's important to put like a face to it. Right. So just maybe to give you two examples, we did in that report find evidence that more than 300,000 people per year die globally and prematurely due to occupational exposure. So these are plastic war occurs. And these modalities do occur, of course, not in the rich countries, but they do occur in facilities that are poorly managed, that have low safety standards. And I think I'm saying that because I think it's important to highlight that the impacts, the health impacts of plastics are not equally distributed. We're all using plastics, right? Everybody's exposed to these chemicals, everybody's exposed to nanomicroplastics for more the products we're using every day. But the bird and really falls disproportionately on poor communities, low and middle income countries, etc., etc. Second example I do want to give is more from not the production, maybe of plastics, but more from people using plastics. So we found evidence in studies that exposure to DHP, which is a plastic size that is quite widely used to make plastics flexible causes about 400,000 premature deaths. In particular, in people that are middle aged, so from 55 to 64 years old, so 400,000 people die prematurely every year just because of that single chemical that's associated with cardiovascular disease. And we do know cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death globally among them. And again, the burden falls disproportionately on countries that have poor chemicals management. Here in Europe, we're hardly using any DHP anymore in our plastics product, so we're protecting our population. China is working hard to protect their population from DHP, other rich countries or developed countries do the same. So the burden again falls on disadvantaged communities with low income, with poor protection of health. So just to balance, I feel the 1.5 trillion dollars annual health costs are a big number, but I feel it's important really to put health center to that and really to emphasize people are dying prematurely because of exposures to these chemicals and you know the issues and that's what really concerns me. The evidence that we collected is very conservative in a sense that we only look for the best evidence for chemicals that have been researched for decades. What about all the other chemicals we don't have that type of and level of evidence for? So I think the 1.5 trillion US dollars in economic losses is a gross underestimate of the true cost, the true health cost of plastics. Yeah, I completely agree and you know you could then even more. So what about the mixtures of these chemicals that we're exposed to? I mean mixtures of chemicals that lead from plastic, for example, food packaging, but we're also exposed to chemicals through inhalation, through personal care products, food contaminations, textiles, exactly. So I agree with Martin that that's a complete underestimate. And that kind of is balanced against the incredible profits that are being made. I think there's another dimension that I want to add here. Sonical people will say, "Oh, there's too many people on this planet." And you know, what if we have increasing infertility that's good, because that will limit the number of people that come into this world? And I find that a very unhelpful argument to me, every child is a hope. I think every human being has their inherent qualities, every form of life is a miracle. And I think we need people on this world that are smart, that are prosocial, that are willing to collaborate, that have the intellectual, the cognitive abilities to understand the human predicament that we find ourselves in. And that will contribute prosocially to protecting our planet. There is no planet B. And so, you know, if we go ahead as a business model to kind of just accept that, "Yeah, these people are worth less. We're just going to sell our toxic plastics to them." And we don't care about it because it makes us profit in the short term, everyone loses. So I'm sort of thinking increasingly about near Darwinism. Darwin said survival of the fittest, which basically translates to failure of reproduction of the least fit, that will be enhanced by the pervasiveness of toxic plastic chemicals. But what's also happening is that it's the survival of the richest. It's the people that have the affluence, that have the economic means to afford clean food, healthy food packaging, healthy governments that protect them in their communities from these toxic assaults, who can educate themselves and work against toxic ignorance, right? And everyone else will be falling off the radar. And I think this is a moral problem. It's really a moral problem. So it's really another reason why we have to talk about this toxic relationship that we have with plastics and also how we're treating human beings. I mean, these are human beings, right? In a very cynical, inhumane way. Right, and I agree that it's very unfairly distributed. But on the other hand, even the richest won't be able to avoid exposure, right? Because plastics and the associated chemicals have just basically reached almost every compartment of the environment. I mean, they're in the air, they're in the water, they're in the soil, they're in the food, they're in our bodies now, right? So I think something fundamental that I think we've lost contact to in our society is that we are part of our environment. Basically, we're not separate from the environment, you know, whatever is out there might also become part of us, right? And I think that's something that for some reason has been lost, maybe in this whole idea of conquering nature like 200 years ago or so, right? Yeah, I completely agree. I do think that, you know, we have to acknowledge we've come a long way as a species. And I think the quality of life that I at least living in Switzerland have is incredible. I have to pinch myself. I should do it more often to appreciate how good the quality of my life is. And also know that that is not a given for most people on this planet. So it's a privilege. I completely agree with you. We are part of nature, but we are also afraid of nature, you know? I mean, that's kind of also hardwired into our DNA. We've evolved with saber-toothed tigers and mammoths trampling us and, you know, redberries killing us and so on. So there is this relationship with nature that is there's also a lot of fear. And the ones of our species that survive that evolution were the ones that were fear protected them, right? Ironically. So, but now fear of nature is maybe not our best friend. I do think that giving ourselves the name Homo sapiens, which stands for the Ys, is a nice display of human arrogance. Of course, you know, we're the ones who have very developed cognitive functions, but we also don't know everything, you know? And, and, you know, pulling fossil carbon out of the ground and hey, we can turn this into plastics and hey, look, we can make more and more plastics and, you know, that's sort of, that's almost a child, childish naivety at display here. And now people grumpily saying, but we want to keep on doing this, you know, when the signs on the wall that this is not a good idea. So we really need some adults in the room. We need some real Homo sapiens, you know? I just think only focusing what we're doing here on this planet on economic output, it's just ill-informed idea. So I think we do have a very big problem and you are both working on this both with your research and also as part of the scientist coalition for an effective plastics treaty. Let's take a constructive look into the future after all this devastating realization that we're in trouble. Like in a nutshell, like what are the most, the three most important things that need to happen in, especially in the field of chemicals so that we can progress in a healthier direction? I mean, I would, I would start by saying, and that's not not only true for chemicals, but also for plastics or stuff in general, uh, use less and use it longer, right? And I think that's something that we came across when when researching and compiling all that signs on plastic chemicals is way, it's just too many. So we can't really control these chemicals, we can't manage them properly to make sure it's not damaging ourselves and nature. So less is more, I would say. And you know, we can talk about the details of what, what is it, what can we do to get to less chemicals and say for chemicals, maybe in the minute, but that should be the priority. I think we've created chemicals that it's like a genie out of the bottle, right? We've created so much synthetic chemistry and that was all great back in the days and that had a lot of benefits and gave a lot of promise and there was a lot of excitement about synthetic chemicals making all these materials and chemicals, etc. But we need to get the genie back into the bottle. I would add that, at least from the world of science, we are, we continue to produce the data showing the evidence. For example, the externalities, this health cost, Lyosander, New York University, a good colleague of ours and friends is doing amazing work on that, several others are too. I think that these kind of hard, tangible economic data will hopefully help to alert people in the financial sector to what's at stake here. So I think that's something that we need to continue also reaching out to those people in power who really understand the economy and understand maybe where good points are for intervention are. And another point just to add is grouping. So we have all these thousands, 10,000 of chemicals. We lack a hazard data on them. We don't really know how to tackle those in a regulatory context and even also for industry that wants to do better, that wants to avoid chemicals of concern and the products that they make. It's difficult to navigate that space. So I think grouping as a promising approach, it basically means that we look at chemicals that have similar chemical structures and we group them together. And the reason why that makes sense is because chemical structures impart functionality. So if you have chemicals that have similar chemical structures, they're very likely to have similar functionalities. Look at the thalates, for example, the beast phenols, where when beast phenol A was identified as a chemical of concern, people were very fast to put labels on their products saying BPA free, but then using a different beast phenol. And that's what we call regrettable substitution because chemical structure, similarity also imparts toxicity. And so if you have chemicals that have similar chemical structures, they are very likely to have similar toxicity and similar impacts on living organisms. And so instead of trying to test each and every single one of those 16,325 chemicals we identified in Blastcam number growing. I need to add. We are now working on approaches to group chemicals. We also have groups of concern in the PLAS Cam report, but we're trying to do that more systematically now as a for-foot contact chemicals, so that regulators can have an easier job at getting rid of chemicals of concern. And we see some encouraging developments in the U where we've now actually managed to deal with PFAS, which are these forever chemicals, persistent, parapodally fluorinated, alkali substances, which are being dealt within the U as a group. And that is a fantastic development. Great, so we have good news. Thank you so much, Martin and Jane, for all the work that you've done, and you're still doing on the topic and for all your engagement and for being a guest on the podcast. Thank you so much for having us. Thanks, Ania, great talking with you. This was PLAS's sphere with Martin Wagner from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and Jane Monke from the Food Packaging Forum. Thanks to both of them for sharing the expertise. You can find the reports we talked about in the episode description. That's the PLAS Cam report and the Lancet Countdown on Health and Plastics. Martin and Jane are both members of the Scientists Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, which offers some great overviews on the plastic pollution problem and solutions on their website. All links are in the show notes. PLAS's sphere is an independent podcast which I produce in my free time without budget. If you like this episode, please support the production with a small donation and with a nice review on your favorite podcast platform. If you have any questions, send them to me [email protected]. There'll be more interviews coming soon, so subscribe if you haven't. Have a great week and see you soon.