You may not realize it, but you are consuming micro plastics every single day. It doesn’t matter how clean your diet is, these tiny particles are everywhere – including the clouds above your head. And we’re only just now learning about the dangers they pose to the human body. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: You may not realize it, but you’re consuming microplastics every single day. It doesn’t matter how clean your diet is. These tiny particles are everywhere, including your brain. And we’re only just learning about the dangers they pose because the industry’s kept it quiet for so long. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. We have just so far this year have had about half a dozen new studies come out about microplastics, nanoplastics, and all these other plastic fibers. And each study has looked at a different part. We had one study that looked at bottled waters and they found out, hey, wait a minute. Every bottled water we tested had microplastics. A ridiculous, dangerous amount. Every vegetable we tested, oh, you got microplastics. Every piece of meat, every store cereal and whatever it is on the grocery store shelves, they’re telling us about 99% of ’em have levels of microplastics that would make you ill if you even knew the numbers. That’s how bad this problem is.
Mike Papantonio: We consume almost 12,000 microplastics every year going into our body. Matter of fact, you talked about bottled water. Just to put in perspective, you’re talking about 370,000 plastic particles that we find in one. When they tested, they found 370,000 plastic particles. Well, this doesn’t just move through your system. As a matter of fact, what it does is it migrates through your system in a way it can migrate systemically through your blood. It can actually cross through the blood brain barrier and end up in your brain. And that’s what’s happening. And you have from a gastrointestinal problem, it actually moves through the lining of your gut and sets there in the lining for your life. There’s no way to get rid of it. You see, that’s people, well, I can choate my system and everything’s gonna be okay. Or maybe I’ll stop drinking now, bottled water, and I’m gonna be. No, you’re not. It’s there. And the worst thing about it is they’ve known about this for a long time and they kept it real quiet.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, they did. And listen, people could try to say, okay, well, I’m only gonna eat organic. I’m not gonna go to these places that have horrible factory farm practices, which is great, by the way. But you’re not gonna get away from the microplastics because, uh-oh, another study found out it’s in the rainwater. So unless you can eat food that is a hundred percent not produced anywhere in the environment, you are consuming these plastics.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, talk about it, explain to ’em why it’s in the rainwater. It’s taken up into the clouds. Talk about that just a second.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. What we’ve got here is these fibers are actually so small that when you get this evaporation, because they’re everywhere in the environment, they actually get evaporated with the clouds. And you have a lot of it that goes up there, not just through evaporation, but through actual pollution. Fossil fuel pollution, a lot of their plastic production, which is what fossil fuel companies are also hugely involved in and it’s big clouds billowing up into the sky filled with these particles that rain down and we consume.
Mike Papantonio: Let me put it in perspective how dangerous it is, other than the fact we know now that it migrates through your entire body, including past your blood brain barrier, which is supposed to be protection for your brain. Now the problem is it has clear connection to high blood pressure, reproductive issues. Sometimes it’s so severe that it will actually mimic early menopause. Because what it does is it mimics estrogen. It mimics estrogen, and your system reacts, it disrupts your endocrine system. And so all of a sudden these things are going sideways. And I’d like to say, we just found out about this. You and I did a story what, couple years ago?
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: But the truth is nobody talks about it. Again, set out, go ahead and Google. Google the internet and find out how many times you have seen this done on corporate television. The reason why, do I have to finish the sentence? Why don’t you finish it for me?
Farron Cousins: Obviously we’ve got the big advertiser stuff, and of course we also have a problem with the news consumers themselves in which we have found out over the years because we talk about climate change a lot.
Mike Papantonio: Big point, big point. Talk about it.
Farron Cousins:: And people just seem, okay, oh yeah, the environment’s dying and we’re basically killing off our own species. Yawn.
Mike Papantonio: Move on.
Farron Cousins: Give me something more fiery. Talk about how this person said something stupid on Twitter. They don’t care. People seem to really not care about the fact that you are being poisoned by corporate America. There is nothing you can do to avoid it. We can demand accountability and we can change it. But not if y’all just say, well, what can you do?
Mike Papantonio: Just so you know, as you know, we do the big cases, tobacco, opioids, human trafficking, PFAS, I think we’ve done most of the major environmental cases in this country. We’re already getting calls on this. We’re taking a look at it. And there’s no surprise here. The industry’s known about this a long time. A long time. And so as I consider it, you hit it on the head. Give me something to get mad about that politician. Give me something to get mad about with that political party. But where it comes to give me something to think about to protect my health, like climate change. You wanna kill the traffic on a site, do a story on climate change. You will destroy the traffic. They all say, oh, this is bad. We’re all dying. But they don’t even wanna listen to the story. Same way here. Exactly the same way here.
Suspicious Activity: That it had helped dirty money flow through its branches around the world, including at least 800. Plaintiffs allege that the defendants provided money and medical goods to terrorist groups, Hezbollah and Jaysh al-Adl. This is a well organized business for these individuals that carry out these attacks. Terrorism is a business and they run it like a business. They knew about what was going on for a decade. They absolutely, absolutely no question about it knew that HSBC was washing money. They had every reason to understand it was for terrorism and it was for drug cartels. Took no action whatsoever.
These banks are involved, their accounts are connected, and they’re using them to mask the transactions. The more complicated they can make the transactions, the more distance they could put between the bad guys and a seemingly legitimate purpose of these funds. They pay $1.9 billion, which is a drop in the bucket compared to what they’ve made. And nobody goes to prison. These CEOs, these bankers that made this decision, they’re safe at home. They know what they’ve done. They know it’s resulted in the death of Americans, contractors and soldiers, not just hundreds but thousands. And we look the other way because they don’t look like criminals. The die cast, the people that are responsible for it, are on Wall Street. And they don’t look like criminals. It’s almost a suspension of disbelief. Sometimes I’ll have people call me and say, is this, is this real? Do they really get away with this? Yeah, they do.
