Microplastics, your body, and you: a primer
I’ve been getting a lot of questions since announcing my microplastics project a bit ago, so I thought I’d write a quick FAQ. I’ll probably add it to my website as well. And remember, if you’re interested, sign up on the form for updates and to be a beta tester.
1. What exactly is the microplastics product you’re developing?
A modified form of oat fiber. We’re going to take oat fiber and transform it using food-grade ingredients to make it trap plasticizers. If you consume this product, which we’re calling NeutraOat, within an hour or two of consuming plasticizers, NeutraOat will trap the plasticizers. Then you will excrete the plasticizers along with the oat fiber.
This will prevent the plasticizers from crossing from your digestive tract into your bloodstream.
2. Just oat fiber is enough to trap plasticizers? Seems hard to believe.
Nope. Oat fiber alone won’t trap plasticizers. We’ll be modifying oat fiber to have a honeycomb structure, as well make it “sticky” for plasticizers.
Basically, we transform oat fiber from looking like a microscopic rock to looking like microscopic pumice, along with making inside the holes sticky. The holes are too small for anything other than plasticizers, which get stuck inside the honeycombed oat and get excreted out.
3. What will NeutraOat look like?
It will be a white powder in a capsule. If you open up the capsule, the powder will look, behave, and taste exactly like oat fiber. You can also sprinkle it on yogurt or in your water, in which case your yogurt or water will become more viscous.
4. Can I take it just once a month and have it still be effective?
No. It’s modified oat fiber, so you eat it, it’s active as long as it’s in your digestive system, and then you excrete it. If it’s in your digestive system at the same time as plasticizers, it will remove them. If it’s not, it will still have the same effects as normal oat fiber, mainly helping you be more “regular” and preventing blood sugar spikes.
It might be annoying to have to take it with every meal, but it’s way safer than having it stick around. After all, I’m not trying to create another forever chemical.
5. Will this help remove plastics from my testicles or brain?
Probably not. In fact, this probably won’t help remove plastics at all. It will help remove plasticizers from your digestive tract. Plasticizers are the chemicals that make plastics soft and malleable.
Unlike plastics themselves, plasticizers generally do not stay permanently in your body. Once they’re in your bloodstream, they leave it within 24 hours usually via your liver and kidneys, like other toxins do. The problems with plasticizers are first, that they can cause a lot of damage within those 24 hours, like cancer, infertility, and hormonal disruption; and second, that we are exposed to them constantly via our food and drink.
Any food or drink or drink that you ingest that might have come into contact with plastic, like your hot coffee that came into contact with rubber tubing, your takeout served in a plastic container, or even your organic steak from a cow that had plastic in its hay, could have plasticizers in it. Preventing those plasticizers from entering your bloodstream once you accidentally ingest them is the goal of our product.
6. How do microplastics get into my body?
Plastics can generally only get into your body if you eat plastic. Plasticizers, the chemicals that make plastics soft and malleable, can get into your body in a few different ways, like eating, drinking, breathing polluted air, or through your skin.
That being said, for the average person, the primary way plasticizers get inside your body is through your food and drink. As mentioned above, if the food or drink you eat came into contact with plastic at any time, especially if it was hot or it came from an animal that ingested plastics, it will likely have plasticizers in it.
7. What proof do you have that plasticizers are bad?
There are dozens of different plasticizers, all specialized for different kinds of plastics, from the synthetic rubber around your charging cord to the plastic coating on the inside of your disposable coffee cup. They all have different chemical properties and potentially different health effects. So, it’s difficult to have definitive proof that all plasticizers are bad.
We are focusing on making sure NeutraOat addresses the most common plasticizers that have the most definitive proof that they are bad. Bisphenol-A (BpA) is the prime example of this, which is in the lining of many canned goods, is linked to infertility in humans, and causes hormonal disruption in mice. DEHP is another one. It’s used in any sort of rubber tubing, like the tubes in your coffee machine, and is linked to cancer and development delays in humans and in mice.
Our product will target the plasticizers that are the most common and have the most evidence that they’re bad.
8. Will this product help remove PFAS or forever chemicals?
PFAS specifically, no. They have too different of a chemical structure.
However, it will likely help prevent the absorption of the following chemicals from ingestion: pesticides, herbicides, PCBs, dioxins, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and mycotoxins.
In case you’re wondering what those are, here are some explanations:
a. Pesticides and herbicides: put on your fruits and vegetables to kill pests and weeds
b. Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs): very toxic chemicals used in old electrical equipment
c. Dioxins: very toxic chemicals produced from incineration
d. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons: cancer caused chemicals produced from burning of oil, coal, gas, and forest fires
e. Mycotoxins: naturally occurring toxins from mold
Note that, again, NeutraOat will only work to prevent absorption from the digestive tract. Any absorption through the lungs or skin would not be affected. Fortunately, for the average consumer, the main exposure method for all these chemicals is through ingestion, except for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. So, it would still be useful.
9. Where are you at in development?
We are at the end of the ideation stage and moving into prototyping. Once we have a prototype, we’ll do testing in vitro, then in animals, then in volunteers (like you, maybe!).
10. Are you going to take funding for this?
Eventually, probably! It will be separate from my Highway Pharm work, though. If you’re interested, contact me through my website or the form.
I guess “gut condom” doesn’t really roll off the tongue ;)
But en serio, I love the principles behind NeutraOat and stoked to see it come together
Any particular reason you've chosen oat fiber over other high-surface area materials e.g. activated charcoal? Assuming you're going for some kind of functionalisation that broadly targets aromatic or non-polar small molecules to catch as many kinds of plasticisers as possible, you'll probably be mopping up some vitamins too, which is fine but you'll have to warn users to supplement to avoid deficiency if taken continuously.