Packaged Sugar & Salt Contain Microplastics: Report
Transcript
00:00Good evening and welcome to The Big Story.
00:07I'm Nupur Talwar Suri and you're watching NDTV Profit.
00:11Salt and sugar makes for an integral part of any diet.
00:15But what if these two turn out to be the key reason for illnesses?
00:19A recent study by the environmental research agency ToxicsLink has revealed that all salt
00:25and sugar brands they tested contain microplastics.
00:29The highest concentrations of microplastics were detected in iodized salt, appearing as
00:34multicolored thin fibers, films, balls and pellets.
00:38These findings raise serious concerns about the quality of food on market shelves.
00:42To tell us more about the findings of the report, we are now joined by Mr. Satish Sinha,
00:46the Associate Director of ToxicsLink.
00:50Good evening, Mr. Sinha.
00:51Thank you very much for speaking to us on NDTV Profit.
00:54Now your report is creating quite a lot of concern.
00:59Take us through what the report suggests and the data that you have gathered.
01:04Thank you and good evening to you.
01:06Idea was not to create concern.
01:08Idea was to put out some scientific findings into public domain so that we take action
01:14and move towards some solution.
01:16I think this study has been ongoing for us.
01:20We have done 10 years of work of plastics and we found plastics in drinking water.
01:25We found plastics in river Ganges.
01:28We found plastics in soil and it was natural process for us to move to another mass items
01:35of mass consumption, which is salt and sugar.
01:39And we picked up both these, we tested about 10 samples of salt and five samples of sugar.
01:46Both we picked up from the local market and even from online sources and we tested them
01:51and we found that there are very high levels of both microplastics in both these products.
01:57I think the concern is that microplastics is nothing but is a smaller fragments and
02:04smaller particles of plastic alone itself.
02:07And as we all know that plastics contain many, many highly hazardous and toxic chemicals,
02:16which do tend to leach or when we come in contact with them or we're exposed to them.
02:23And microplastics we consume, we are consuming through a lot of food items.
02:27And we also have seen in the recent, you know, research reports that we're finding microplastics
02:34in almost all the organs of human body.
02:37It is found in the lungs, even the placenta.
02:41It has been found in kidneys and just about name of what everything in the blood also,
02:46it is there.
02:47So the question comes that if it is being consumed and it is found in the human body
02:53and we know the sources of, you know, microplastics and could be water, could be food, could be
02:59anything and salt and sugar is one of two of them.
03:02So it is raising some concern that, yes, what do we do about it?
03:07How much is safe?
03:08What is reasonable and what is, how do we control it?
03:12And how do we restrict some of these consumption of or intake of microplastics through food
03:18items?
03:19Right.
03:20Now, your study also looked at data from other countries.
03:24How do we stack up against these other countries and what are the initiatives that are being
03:30taken there?
03:33I think it is across the world that, you know, salt has been studied across many countries.
03:41It has been studies in UK, been studies in US.
03:44It has been studied in Australia, China, Vietnam and any other country that you think of perhaps
03:50has studied salt and we found salt samples containing microplastics.
03:56In sugar, there have not been too many studies.
04:00There has been one study in Germany in 2013 and the second study has been in Bangladesh
04:06in 2022.
04:07And almost similar kind of findings, we also report to this study.
04:13Even the water studies that was done from across all the continents, you're finding
04:19that similar kind of results are happening, are being reported across the world.
04:25The more point or the fundamental point is that microplastics is omnipresent.
04:31It is there in all three mediums that we are talking about, is in water, is in soil and
04:38it is there in aerosols.
04:40So these are the known sources and I think now it is a point of concern as to what do
04:47we do about this foreign body or foreign material, which is now impacting both the human health,
04:53the environment and marine ecology or specifically marine ecology to a larger extent.
04:59Right, I know in your first point you did mention the harmful effects, but at a cellular
05:05level, microplastics potentially impacts, they include permanent alterations to cell
05:13structures, mutations, chronic toxicity.
05:15They're also known as a source of carcinogens that can cause reproductive and developmental
05:22issues and we have seen a rise in those.
05:25Tell us more about it.
05:27Obviously, these are microplastics, people say microplastics are just another dimension
05:35of plastics, another kind of plastics, I would say that they are smaller and more invisible.
05:43So it's a bigger threat because it's more invisible, it can ingress your body into anything.
05:48It has a lot of chemicals, a large part of these chemicals are known for their toxicity.
05:57They are endocrine disruptor, some of them are carcinogen also and some of the other
06:03kinds of metals which are available in plastics can also be neuro and nephrotoxic, nephrotoxic
06:10more than neurotoxic.
06:11So they affect other parts of human body and many of these disease patterns that you see
06:17today which are now available or which are more prevalent today could be because of some
06:26of these chemicals which we are using in many of the products and especially in plastics
06:32and we are being exposed to this plastic.
06:35Now even a food material like fish is very much, it could be contaminated because of
06:40microplastics which is available there and many of these chemicals are known for their
06:46toxicity and the kind of impacts that we have all mentioned and some of them could
06:51be endocrine disruptors.
06:52All right, now we've discussed the report but everybody would want to know what is the
06:58way forward, how do we deal with it because this is here to stay now unless you know we
07:03pass very stringent regulations, we are able to control it.
07:08This is something that's a problem, we now need to find a solution.
07:14That's another difficult question and it's a question that I think the whole world is
07:19confronting this.
07:20There has been a global convention on it, globally all the nations have come together
07:26to understand plastics more and to find solutions for plastic.
07:31I think it's not about, I don't think it is about looking at each product or each item
07:37per se that we consume or that we eat or that we use in our daily life but I think it's
07:43the material plastic which needs to be addressed.
07:46That is where the prevention of the system can start to work.
07:50How do we use plastic, how do we consume plastic, what is the production process and we have
07:57to see the complete as we say life cycle of plastic.
08:00So what do we do upstream to remove some of these chemicals, to clean up the plastic chain
08:06as such and what do we do when we consume it, how safely we consume it and the disposal
08:12point, how safely can we dispose it off so that it does not go out into the environment.
08:19And I just mentioned that even in the country like our own country, we have banned about
08:2419 of these single-use plastic products.
08:27I think more such interventions, more such initiatives will need to be taken and I think
08:36it is more, it will be much more comprehensive if the world today decides how plastic is
08:44to be produced, how the production can be reduced or where is the opportunity for reducing
08:50it and how do you make plastic safer.
08:53Right, absolutely.
08:54Mr. Sinha, those are big questions that are confronting the world and hopefully soon enough
08:58we'll have at least answers to some of those.
09:00Thank you very much indeed for joining us on The Big Story this evening.
09:05Thank you so much.