I’m often asked about microplastics, heavy metals, and other trace adulterants in our environment, air, and water.
Are they a real issue with biological effects, especially on developing people Yes.
Is it worth upending your life, spending three times as much as you would otherwise, and living in a state of cortisol-driven fear? No.
Here’s what I mean. If you really wanted to avoid all microplastics and remove them entirely from your life, diet, and daily experience, this is what would have to happen:
- You’d never go in the ocean. You'd have to avoid all natural bodies of water, in fact. No rivers, no lakes, no surfing, no diving, no grounding in the crystal blue. Hell, you probably couldn’t even go to the beach because every crash of the waves throws up aerosolized microplastics and heavy metals that you then inhale.
- You couldn’t ever salt your food. Pretty much every source of salt contains at least trace amounts of microplastics. So, no more salting your steaks, no more proper hydration. You’d just have to tough it out.
- Oysters are out. Gram for gram, oysters have even more microplastics than salt.
The ironic thing is that only the most refined, purified, and sterilized food has any chance of being totally free of microplastics and other contaminants. I can envision a world where the “cleanest” foods are things like lab-grown meat, which are nutritionally deficient in almost every other way, but “pure” as the driven snow. Would you rather eat that or meat, seafood, and dairy that are a bit higher in microplastics and heavy metals?
