Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, it's Flora, and you're listening to Science Friday.
Chapter 2: What alarming statistics exist about microplastics in the human body?
You have seen the headlines like we've got a spoon's worth of plastic in our brains and microplastics are found in our hearts and our lymph nodes and our bloodstream. It sounds alarming, but the story might be more complicated than it seems. It turns out that measuring microplastics is really hard to do because, guess what?
We're surrounded by plastics, including the pipettes and petri dishes and gloves that we use in the lab. Here to tell us more about this challenge and how she's working to get around it is Dr. Cassandra Rout, who studies microplastics exposure at the University of Queensland in Australia.
Chapter 3: Why is measuring microplastics in a lab so challenging?
Cassie, welcome to Science Friday. Thank you for having me. It's lovely to be here. Okay, tell us about this problem. Why is microplastic measurement a challenge?
Okay, so there are a lot of challenges.
Chapter 4: How did Dr. Cassandra Rauert design a plastic-free lab?
The problems with the microplastics analysis is that the field is so young in terms of the science is so young. So really we've only been looking at plastics in the environment for roughly the last 10 years, plastics in humans for the last four years. So we're very, very early in the technology and in the development to be able to detect them.
And this is really where our research is focused is on how to overcome these challenges.
Okay.
So one of the biggest challenges we have in the field is background contamination. You covered this really nicely in your introduction. There are plastics everywhere and there are plastics everywhere in the chemistry lab.
Chapter 5: What unique features does the Mindaroo Clean Lab have?
But when we are surrounded in an environment that's full of plastic, these materials can shed particles and then they can get into the sample that you're analysing. So it means when we've been processing the sample, What we've done is accidentally introduced plastic into it that wasn't there originally. Right.
So it makes the concentration seem higher than they actually are. Exactly.
Chapter 6: How are lab materials adapted to avoid plastic contamination?
Yeah. So what we did, the first thing we did is we actually built from scratch a plastic free environment that we could process our samples. So we call this the Mindaroo Clean Lab. It's made completely out of stainless steel to try and avoid plastic in the paint, in the walls, plastic in the lino, in the flooring, plastic in the ceiling tiles.
There's plastics everywhere in construction materials. So we had to build a slab out of stainless steel. What does it look like in there?
I mean, is it very shiny? Like what's the experience of being in an all stainless steel room?
Chapter 7: What impact does background contamination have on research results?
We affectionately call it the submarine room. because it does feel like you're going kind of undersea. There's no windows except for one window where you look in. So it does feel like you're going into this weird enclosed space. But I like to think of it as more of like what you would imagine an industrial kitchen looks like. So everything's stainless steel. We've got stainless steel shelves.
We've got stainless steel fume cupboards. And then we've just got glassware sitting on the shelves. So I guess it can kind of look a little bit futuristic, definitely very shiny.
Chapter 8: How does microplastic exposure affect health according to recent studies?
It is a big metal box, so it can get a bit noisy in there. So we have acoustic panels, which are made out of aluminium, again metal. But yeah, it's a massive metal box, but kind of looks like an industrial kitchen, I suppose.
What about all the pipettes and petri dishes and beakers? What do you do about those?
Yeah, so we've been able to exchange everything into a glass or a stainless steel alternative. So even boxes that we carry our samples in are stainless steel. We use glass syringes instead of plastic pipettes. We've been able to exchange everything out. So there's never anything plastic that actually touches the sample.
Wow. I mean, it really shows you how pervasive plastic is when you go through the list of things that you've had to exchange out. I mean, did it change your results?
Absolutely. So when we first commissioned the lab, we did some background testing just to see what we could detect in there compared to our normal lab where we do all of our other research. Background concentrations were 100 times lower in the clean lab. So it drastically reduces any potential for contamination. But what's interesting is that we still can detect some trace levels sometimes.
A lot of the plastics are probably what we're bringing into the room with us. So plastics in the air, they tend to be charged. We have like this particle bubble that surrounds us where we've got these static particles that just attach to our clothes. So we can actually bring them into the room with us. So we change into a fresh lab coat.
We have pull-up cotton pants that we put over our clothing before we enter the clean room to try and reduce this. But there's always some tiny particles that you still manage to bring in with you. So this just goes back to, as you said, they're so pervasive. It's just plastics everywhere. And that's why background contamination is one of the biggest challenges that we have.
Given this, how do we think about previous research on microplastics, like especially microplastics in the human body?
Okay, I'm going to take a second just to think. So some of the previous studies have either not accounted for background contamination or just haven't reported it in their studies. And I think that's a limitation in some of the previous studies that have been published that we don't know if they're just reporting, say, something falling out of the air rather than an actual plastic in the sample.
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