You Eat Plastic Every Day. Here's How To Avoid It.

Microplastics are everywhere, including in your body. I spent 24 hours doing everything I could to avoid ingesting them. It shouldn't be this hard.

Huge shoutout to my wonderful patrons for helping make this video possible, and especially to Krista Steichen, Craig Guy, Mariia Smyk, Sönke Schlüter, Gregory Baute, Melissa Bedford, Neil, and Ben McGill.

Links:

[jeremyg]

That moment when you realize that plastic fiber probably came from his sweater

[Crequidum]

Hey Kurtis, not enabling ads is a pretty cool thing to do! But unfortunately it also diminishes your reach within the platform since YouTube doesn't get money from your vids, so the algorithm favors you less. Just thought I'd let you know.

[sad_boi_]

kurtis: *looks at every single grain of salt through a microscope to make sure it doesn't contain any plastic*

r/madlads

[eatrawfood]

We know that plastics are endocrine disrupters really do we need to say more.

[jokujou]

A week?


I can eat a credit card in 10 seconds

[maritachikuge]

'Video number two' - I see what you did there, Kurtis!

[Mimi-zcri]

I'm only in my teens and everything like this always has me overthinking 24/7, this stuff scares and worries me. I wish I never had to worry about this. Ever. I have heard and seen many ways people are trying to fix this issue and it makes me happy hoping fresher, better water and food, air in the near future.

[domainofscience]

This was really well put together, thanks Kurtis, really great video!

[MedlifeCrisis]

You are the best kind of YouTuber. I like watching people do things 99% of us wouldn't do, go that extra mile. Great stuff. But. A WHOLE CREDIT CARD WTF

[moonchild]

I'm so sick about this. I cannot believe this is happening to all of us. I do not eat seafood and I'm so happy I do not now. I eat & drink alot of stuff in plastic and breathing it as well. I'm so sick now I do not know how I'm going to do this. Lord have mercy on us.

[dodaexploda]

Did you also make sure there was no plastic in the clothes you wore? My understanding is that can be a big source of the plastics in our body.

[yoshikochikuni]

Kurtis: “I’m living in a hut in the middle of an island so I don’t swallow the plastic in the air.

Also Kurtis: *[Wears plastic sunglasses]*

[loreleihillard]

Me: *eats wrappers off of sweets occasionally*
Kurtis: "You eat plastic everyday"
Me: "Well, Duh"

[RytisLikeThatLikeThis]

And now they found it in our Blood as of 2022

You were ahead of your time !

[janedoe]

Plastic: it's for the synthetic people who prefer convenience over nature.

[juliesentman]

Hi! I'm an undergraduate researcher at UMass currently studying the effects of microplastics in soil and in our waste management systems! I'm writing up a report and wanted some inspiration to get me started, and this was a wonderful video! The experiment I just ran was looking at the size and number of microplastics in soil and how that would impact lettuce growth and the soil rhizospheres and such. It definitely had a large impact, which was expected, however because there is so little research, as you said, we have to do these basic experiments to show it because they've never been done before. Of course, this was with pristine plastics (as we'd have to degrade our own plastics, which is a very difficult thing to do- we recently found a way to do it but it's not perfect by any means. Only a few small change in the structure of the plastic) so we're going to run it again with degraded plastics if we're able to. Personally, I believe that there is no avoiding plastics at this point and I hope to do more research on the chemically damaging aspects of microplastics in our own bodies. Microplastics are toxic (at certain levels, as is any pollutant) but no one really knows what it does to our bodies. Of course, this research would require another few organic chemistry classes (the bane of my existence) but it'll be worth it for science.
Love your content!

[phuckyu]

5:04 Hopefully some lab will answer the call of doody.

[tolgacool]

3:22 Remote parts of the world like - the Alps?

You've never been to the Alps have you? Literally every single valley and every single hillside is populated

[russbuss]

This is why everyone was an absolute Chad 200 years ago.

[samconcklin]

This is incredible. I had no idea there was plastic in the air like that! Thank you Kurtis for making these pure videos and giving us honest, bite-sized looks at issues like the plastic crisis. I look forward to your next adventure, and I wish you and Sir Stabbington the best.