#323 Microplastics, Pollution and Your Body: What You Need to Know | Dr. Stephanie Wright
The Doctor's Kitchen Podcast
Dr Rupy Aujla
4.8 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 12 November 2025
⏱️ 115 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How much plastic are we actually absorbing and what’s it doing to our health?
In this eye-opening episode, I’m joined by Dr. Stephanie Wright, one of the UK’s leading scientists in microplastic research, to explore what happens when plastic pollution doesn’t just affect the environment, but our bodies too.
We dive into:
🧪 What are micro- and nanoplastics, and how are they getting into our lungs, gut, and even blood?
🌍 The biggest sources of exposure in modern life from tires to tap water and food packaging to clothes as well as the city air I’m breathing in right now
🧬 How plastic particles could be contributing to chronic inflammation, hormone disruption, and affecting fertility
🧼 Whether we can actually detox or eliminate plastics from our body naturally and how the liver, fibre, and exercise may play a role
🔍 What we know so far about plastics and brain health, cancer, immunity, dementia, and more
Plus, we cover simple, science-backed strategies to help reduce your exposure from filters and cooking swaps to smarter shopping and clothing choices.
Dr Stephanie Wright is an Associate Professor in Environmental Toxicology in the Environmental Research Group at Imperial College London. She received a Ph.D. in Biosciences at the University of Exeter (2015), then completed 2 fellowships at King's College London. She has 15 years’ experience in microplastic research and lead the Microplastics Team. She’s also participated in microplastic working groups for the World Health Organisation and the European Commission.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Should we all start thinking about reducing our plastic exposure? |
| 0:05.3 | Yes. |
| 0:06.1 | Are there microplastics in the air that we breathe? |
| 0:09.6 | Yes. |
| 0:10.5 | Oh. |
| 0:11.6 | Can we remove plastics in our body naturally through our own detoxification systems? |
| 0:18.9 | Yes. |
| 0:19.8 | Can we actually reduce our exposure in the environment when we're |
| 0:24.2 | outside? Yes. Could microplastics drive chronic inflammation? Yes. Is there plastic in my tap water? |
| 0:35.2 | Possibly. And does my tea bag really shed plastic when I dunk it into hot water? |
| 0:43.7 | Possibly. Oh gosh. Hi, I'm Dr. Rupi. I'm a medical doctor and nutritionist. And when I suffered a |
| 0:52.5 | heart condition years ago, I was able to reverse it |
| 0:55.5 | with diet and lifestyle. This opened up my eyes to the world of food as medicine to improve our |
| 1:02.0 | health. On this podcast, I discuss ways in which you can use nutrition and lifestyle to improve |
| 1:08.1 | your own well-being every day. I speak with expert guests and we |
| 1:12.1 | lean into the science, but whilst making it as practical and as easy as possible, so you can take |
| 1:18.0 | steps to change your life today. Welcome to the Doctor's Kitchen podcast. |
| 1:35.3 | How much plastic are we actually exposed to absorbing and what is it actually doing to our health? |
| 1:42.1 | Well, in this eye-opening episode where I learned a ton, I'm joined by Dr. Stephanie Wright. |
| 1:47.0 | She's one of the UK's leading scientists in microplastic research. And we explore what happens when plastic pollution doesn't just affect our environment, |
| 1:51.9 | but our bodies as well. We're going to dive into the differences between micro and nanoplastics, |
| 1:58.8 | the types of plastics that we are exposed to, how they're getting into |
... |
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