Did you know: Your instant food delivery apps are serving microplastics in groceries

When Pariksha Rao ordered cauliflower from the instant food delivery app Swiggy, it came wrapped in a nylon mesh. In a bid to unwrap it, she sliced the mesh with a knife. What followed was a tsunami of microplastics floating in the air, sticking to her clothes, the vegetable, and landing in the darkest nooks of the kitchen. In a frenzy, Rao used a vacuum cleaner to wipe off the stubborn microplastics.

To her respite, plastic came off her clothes and the kitchen floor. However, the real horror began when the plastic pieces remained stuck to the cauliflower. All the vacuum suction on the veggie went in vain. No amount of cutting and cleaning could separate the microplastic from the cauliflower. Ultimately, Rao had to dump the vegetable after multiple failed attempts.

She said to herself, "Today it was me in the kitchen, and not my help. What if I wasn't around and my help faced the same situation? Would she have cared to clean it at all?" The question seemed daunting to Rao, a clinical nutritionist and founder of the health and wellness venture NuWe.

Not just cauliflower, but microplastics have infiltrated Earth at the depths of the Mariana Trench and reached the heights of Mount Everest. Tiny pieces of plastic debris have been found buried under the Antarctic Sea and the drinking water around the globe. It has permeated into the guts of marine animals and travelled into human bodies. Researchers have revealed that traces of microplastics have also been found in human blood.

It is no surprise that microplastics have penetrated the food chain and are gradually seeping into edible food. How does it affect the consumer and can we prevent it from entering our very plates? To find out, Midday Online spoke to distinguished researchers in the field of plastic studies, environmentalists, and nutritionists.

How do microplastics enter the food chain?
Nutritionist Pariksha Rao dives deep into the breakdown process of plastic. "Plastic materials are supplemented with additives to enhance their properties, like plasticizers and colouring agents. These additives are of small molecular size and tend to leach into the surrounding environment, thereby getting transported through different food chains."

These plasticizers act as a magnet for toxic chemicals in the environment and transport them within and between different habitats. Microplastics pose an additional risk to human health as they get ingested by a variety of aquatic organisms, both freshwater, and marine. Consequently, they begin to accumulate through the food web.

The mass production of plastic has led us into dystopic times. Microplastics can now be found in agricultural soil, leading to plant uptake, which ultimately ends up in the human stomach through meals. If this is not enough, microscopic blotches of plastic have also been found in treated and packaged drinking water as well.

A global study revealed that of all the samples tested across the world, 85 per cent of the tap water samples showed the presence of microplastics. The results showed that all tap water samples had an average of about 15-20 microplastic particles per litre of sizes smaller than 0.5 um.

"Now, this number might seem small, but considering the problem on a macro scale, it is frightening to see just how much microplastics humans directly ingest just from their drinking water," remarked Aditya Pratap Singh, who is researching ways to mitigate plastic pollution in water bodies. At present, the aquatic food chain and tap water are the sources of the highest amounts of microplastics entering the human body, apart from bottled water.

Why do microplastics evade the filtration process?
Microplastics are essentially plastic debris that is smaller than 5 mm in diameter. The debris can be of varying sizes, but most particles are smaller than half of a micron, i.e., a thousandth of a millimetre. At this size, they are invisible to the naked eye and manage to pass through the majority of filtration facilities.

Chauhan is working to find solutions to filter plastics from potable water. He has developed MICROPA - A novel approach for dye-based detection and algae-driven filtration of microplastics in drinking water.

How do microplastics get absorbed by aquatic life?
Although microplastic pollution can now be found almost anywhere, ocean surfaces and seashores have the highest concentrations of microplastics. Plastic pollution on beaches and rivers has resulted in plastic debris eventually reaching the oceanic ecosystem and becoming a permanent part of it because it never degrades, added Chauhan.

PET bottles and polyethylene bags are already proven to damage aquatic life, but microplastics are now exponentially increasing the risk. Microplastics on the ocean surface are ingested by various forms of aquatic animals. These microplastics stay inside their bodies and can lead to suffocation or even death.

A study in 2019 has shown that microplastics on the ocean surface also adsorb on the surfaces of specific microalgae and travel down to the ocean bed as the coagulate becomes larger and denser. This expands the threat to even deep-sea animals. Multiple fish and turtles discovered after fishing or on sea beaches were found to be full of microplastics that they had ingested throughout their lives, which was also likely the cause of their deaths.

What happens when humans unknowingly ingest microplastics?
Chauhan is of the opinion that the problem of microplastics in our bodies is bigger than it seems. It might look like the microplastics we eat would get excreted just like any other toxicant. But apparently, that is not the case with these little kittens. Scientists are continuously studying the topic, and recent studies confirmed the presence of microplastics in the human digestive tract, blood, and even the human placenta.

Being smaller than a micron, these microplastic particles can diffuse through the cell membrane and enter muscle or blood tissues. Also, the continuous ingestion of microplastic at the present rate leads to biomagnification and will eventually cause inflammatory reactions. As a result, while consuming microplastics may not have immediate health consequences, it can cause significant harm to human health in the long run.

"It can lead to serious health conditions ranging from cardiovascular issues to the formation of a tumour, eventually leading to cancer. Scientists are involved in finding ways to combat this issue of microplastics. The size of these pollutants makes it difficult to identify them and subsequently filter them", added Chauhan.

Environmentalist Nikhil Kaushik shares that it is difficult to establish long-term effects on humans. In his opinion, microplastics could potentially become carriers for heavy metals which could in turn have severe effects on human health. Why such a study is difficult is the widespread presence of microplastics in practically everything we use, making it difficult to isolate the effect of a specific exposure from other possible causes of exposure.

What are the ways to mitigate the damaging effects of microplastics?
One of the key things to understand is that we already know plastics do not degrade easily. They would survive for thousands of years, and we are yet to know a lot about the harmful effects of microplastics present in our ecosystem. Rao lists down actionable items to reduce the damages caused by microplastics:

1. Avoid single-use plastic and other synthetic plastics like nylon, polyethylene, polyester, etc.

2. Avoid cosmetics that contain plastic elements.

3. Reduce shellfish consumption.

4. Don't microwave your food in plastic.

5. Dust and vacuum your indoors regularly.

6. As much as possible, resort to recycling.

How can microplastic pollution be eradicated?
Chauhan urges that the greater goal for the eradication of microplastics should be taking steps to prevent plastic pollution. The use of recyclable plastics should be promoted, and litter on beaches must be prevented. New policies can be introduced to encourage people to gradually shift to no plastic usage.

On a personal level, a person can try to avoid using plastic bottles for drinking water because they corrode from the inside over time and the person can ingest massive amounts of microplastics.

Rao shares industrial ways to reduce microplastic pollution:

1. Improve the production efficiency of plastic by using biodegradable plastic and banning single-use plastics.

2. Life cycle assessments of production: packaging of larger sizes, and lower weights, with increased reusability and recyclability; use of lower-energy intensive materials; and eco-friendly means of transportation and efficient shipping configurations

3. Reducing consumption of plastic: Avoiding unnecessary packaging or choosing eco-friendlier alternatives.

4. Increasing awareness of environmental impacts of consumer choices through formal (i.e., in schools) or informal (e.g., news, clean-ups) education.

5. Improving the disposing of waste through door-to-door collection, with or without fees; curbside collection; and buy-back centres (buying litter) or drop-off centres.

6. Recycling waste through the collection of separated waste by consumers; separation of recyclables and elimination of contaminants; grounding and segregation by polymer and colour.

7. Waste to energy conversion (production of steam, heat, electricity, or fuel from waste)

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