Audio long-read: How harmful are microplastics?
Nature Podcast
podcast@nature.com
4.5 • 893 Ratings
🗓️ 24 May 2021
⏱️ 23 minutes
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Summary
Scientists are trying to figure out whether these pervasive plastic specks are dangerous.
Wherever they look – from the bottom of oceans to the top of mountains – researchers are uncovering tiny specks of plastic, known as microplastics.
Scientists are trying to understand the potential impacts of ingesting these pervasive plastics but early results are ambiguous, as some experiments might not reflect the diversity of microplastics that exist in the real world.
This is an audio version of our feature: Microplastics are everywhere — but are they harmful?
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Transcript
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| 0:58.0 | Music for tonight's draw. The National Lottery. Rules and procedures apply. Players must be 18 or over. This is an audio long read from nature. In this episode, microplastics are everywhere. But are |
| 1:05.3 | they harmful? Written by Shao Jure Lim and read by me, Benjamin Thompson. |
| 1:17.8 | Dunjou Li used to microwave his lunch each day in a plastic container. |
| 1:24.6 | But Lee, an environmental engineer, stopped when he and his colleagues made a disturbing discovery. Plastic food containers shed huge numbers of tiny specks, called |
| 1:29.3 | microplastics, into hot water. We were shocked, Lee says. Kettles and baby bottles also shed |
| 1:37.4 | microplastics, Lee and other researchers at Trinity College Dublin reported last October. |
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