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

About this episode

The episode explores the impacts of plastic chemicals on health and discusses potential solutions to mitigate their effects.

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 great 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 thana 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 Muncke, Managing Director and Chief Scientific Officer at the Food Packaging Forum. We met on the sidelines of the plastics treaty negotiations in Geneva a month ago. Martin Wagner: https://www.ntnu.edu/employees/martin.wagner Jane Muncke…

People in this episode

Host: Anja Krieger

Guests: Martin Wagner, Jane Muncke

Topics covered

• plastic chemicals
• human health
• environmental health
• toxicology
• hormone systems
• political regulation
• plastic pollution

Keywords

• plastic pollution
• toxic chemicals
• dishwasher safety
• food packaging
• hormone disruption
• chemical regulation
• health impacts

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Norwegian University of Science and Technology NTNU, Food Packaging Forum, PlastChem, The Lancet, Scientists Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty

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