Season 6 Episode 3: Toddlers, AI, Reading to Dogs, and Invasive Microplastics with Dr. Imari Walker-Franklin

Imagine the world through the eyes of a toddler, where every sight and sound is a piece of an intricate language puzzle.  Our journey begins with a look into how AI might mimic these tiny linguists, based on a study that is both intriguing and a bit unsettling. While pondering the potential of AI, we'll weave in stories of my niece's son Raffy's adorable encounters with our faithful dogs, Bunsen and Beaker, and offer a glimpse of the wholesome pet research I'm bringing to the Calgary Teachers Convention.

Expect to chuckle at a bad joke or two about AI's internet escapades - because, who doesn't enjoy a little humor mixed with their science?

 Together with Dr. Imari Walker Franklin, our amazing guest, we'll unravel the complex threads of microplastic pollution, its health implications, and their insidious journey from our textiles to the peaks of Everest.

As we wrap up, let's reflect on the pressing reality of plastic pollution with a critical eye towards the ineffective recycling rates and the symbols of environmental neglect scattered around us. Sharing insights and personal commitments towards sustainability, we'll explore how each of us can contribute to the fight against this crisis.

No family section this week, but it will be back with a ton of heart and humor before you can shake your tail!

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Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:08

Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zekowski. I'm a high school chemistry teacher and a science communicator, but I'm also the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker, the science dogs on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold onto your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Science Podcast. This is episode three of season six.

Speaker 2: 0:39

I'm recording this extra early because this week is bananas. I'm presenting at the Calgary Teachers Convention all day Wednesday, all day Thursday, and both of those days are when we work on the podcast, so this is going to come out a bit later on Fridays. If you're listening this a day late, that's why we have a great show for you today. The science news item we're going to be looking at is how AI is being trained to think, but it's being trained to think like how babies gather language, how babies learn language. It's a little creepy and then a very wholesome pet news item, and it's actually the study one of the studies that Chris and I are going to be talking about in our presentation. So not everybody gets to make it to the Calgary presentation and I know very I don't even think a single person who's coming to the Calgary presentation listens to our show. But I mean that's cool if there's a crossover. But I thought I would give everybody one of the studies that we're going to be talking about, and the study is so, so wholesome. Our guest and ask an expert is Dr Imari Walker Franklin and we're going to be talking about microplastics Fascinating topic. Okay, the bad joke. This was maybe not a bad joke, this one, I think this one's a real, real thinker. What do you call a large language model like chat GPT that's been trained on too much internet data? A conspiracy theorist? Think about it. Okay, on with the show, because there's no time like science time.

Speaker 2: 2:11

This weekend science news let's talk about something kind of spooky. I think it's kind of spooky, but before we get to the spooky spookiness, let's talk about babies and toddlers and all that kind of stuff. So this weekend I wasn't there for it, but our niece Melissa has a little guy named Rafi. If you follow Bunsen and Beaker on social media, occasionally you get to see Rafi he is, he is a little guy and he has the biggest smile. He is super funny and fun and we occasionally help Melissa out by watching him, and Bunsen and Beaker just love Rafi. I adore this little guy and Bunsen especially just can't get enough of Rafi. I think it stems from when we watched Rafi when he was like a baby baby and he was messy and he would drop food on the floor. Bunsen just loved that bit. He was both kind of like protective, like he wanted to always make sure Rafi was okay. He saw Rafi as like a fun thing to play with, because they do chase. Of course, rafi was sticky and gave him good food, so it was like all three.

Speaker 2: 3:21

Now I'm bringing this up because this is about artificial intelligence mimicking the way that infants learn language, and it's been a while since we've had a baby. Our Adam and Duncan are both grown. They're not babies anymore. We had babies, we had babies, and it was wild when they started to learn how to talk how quickly, at least you know, our boys learned language and that's what this study is looking at.

Speaker 2: 3:50

The AI model was trained on 60 hours of video footage, and the video footage it was trained on wasn't adult speaking, but it was a baby named Sam. There may be some ethical issues there in the future because obviously Sam's a baby, even though Sam's parents gave the study permission. But Sam wore a little head mounted camera and experienced the environment and was recorded from six months to over two years old. So this kid wore a head mounted camera for a long time, kind of like a toddler. Truman show. Remember that really good movie with Jim Carrey, the Truman show.

Speaker 2: 4:33

Anyways, the data that was fed to the AI represented a tiny, tiny fraction of the footage of Sam's day to day life, about 1% of Sam's waking hours. But from this the model learned associations between objects in the videos and words spoken by caregivers. So the idea was that you know when you're talking to a toddler and you pick up a thing and you're like block, block, ball cat, you're very thoughtful and you enunciate the word and that neural networks need that. They need image training, image training. So why were they training it this way? Well, at the end, after this training, the AI showed a remarkable ability to associate words with visual pictures and it was higher than like random guessing. If you show an AI something it could just randomly show the block. It could say giraffe. Right, it was correct 62% of the time. That's way higher than random guessing. I don't even know what the chances of random guessing is, or whatever words the AI knows and whatever pictures the AI knows for it to correctly see the photo and then the word.

Speaker 2: 6:03

Now this whole study suggests that AI models can establish associations between language and context. It initiates the process of word learning, similar to how infants learn language. Remember going back to my Rafi story how quickly Rafi learned language freaky, deaky. If AIs could start to pick up language that fast. Now there were some funny artifacting, of course. The artifacting is the word you use when AI goofs. The model made errors like confused words, like hand and sand. So rhyming words were a challenge for this AI system. A caution within the study is that well, it did great.

Speaker 2: 6:52

Directly equating how this model learns with how an infant learns is not appropriate. They're learning quite a bit differently. The learning that goes on in a baby's brain is vastly different than the learning that goes on in an AI neural network. The other thing is that it really struggles with rhyming words. What about? What are the words that mean different things but are said the same way? Like Dr Evil, I enjoy women of that caliber. I wonder how it does with words like that.

Speaker 2: 7:29

It's a short and sweet science news item, kind of fun. And that's science news for this week. This weekend Pet Science we have a super wholesome study. This study is also one of the ones that Chris and I are going to be breaking down in our presentation Dogs in the Classroom. So it's pretty sweet. It just hits you in the heart and it's part of a massive, growing amount of evidence that dogs, when used appropriately, really help kids. So let's just jump right into it.

Speaker 2: 8:04

This study was conducted close to home. Ironically, this study was conducted in Calgary, the place where we're going to do the presentation. The schools within the study had similar characteristics. They're relatively the same size. Relatively, the kids had the same socio economic background. That's important. One of the biggest predictors of how well kids do in school is how much money the parents make. I know that's sad, but that comes up all the time. And they had a small group of kids from grade three classrooms. They were recruited for participation, totally allowed to be part of it by parents and guardians, and they won't have having 14 male students and 10 female students. And the kids were little. They're between seven and eight years old. Now this study is all about reading, reading attitudes and social emotional interactions.

Speaker 2: 8:59

I'm not going to get into like what these tests do, partly because I only superficially understand them. It's not something that I use in high school. I'm not trained to administer these tests, but the study had folks that were. They use something called the Brigham's comprehensive inventory of basic skills. That's a CIBS two. That's a test that's used to test kids literary skills. They also use social functioning through the social school behavior scales, the SSBS two. Then there were also exit interviews conducted with the students, their parents and the teachers.

Speaker 2: 9:38

So they had a gambit of data. There were two interventions because. So there were two interventions given to the kids, one that was adult only and one that had the dog. Right, because you just don't want to like, not try to help kids read and there's tons of good evidence that if you had kids early enough you can really catch them up with reading. So one of them was a trained school volunteer that was trained in how to do these reading interventions and then one was with the dog, the certified therapy dog. These interventions were held weekly during school hours and they lasted approximately 15 minutes over an eight week period. When the adults were doing intervention, the students read pre-selected books, they had conversations with the volunteer and they received feedback on how they were doing when the kids interacted with the dog. It was the same, but the kids read to the dog and then they were encouraged to have some dog interactions like petting. The dog was trained to cuddle into the kids or or put its paw on the kids and after the eight weeks they ran the data for if there were improvements in those assessments.

Speaker 2: 10:57

The results were really hopeful for two reasons. Overall the kids within this intervention did better with their oral reading level and that was both for the adult and the dog. So both had an amazing effect. The impact of reading to a dog first had larger improvements in oral reading level compared to reading to the adult. Over time the adult intervention caught up to the dog a little bit, but the dog group was always a little bit ahead in the improvements. So there seems to be a huge boost. Initially with the dog group and over time the adult intervention did great, but by the time that the study was over it never fully caught up to the dog group. On the social competence side everybody did better, dog group and adult group, but there wasn't enough of a difference between the two groups to say, the kids who interacted with the dogs had a better social competence score. So the conclusion of the study is that early childhood intervention in reading is super important. And the study also showed that there is a huge advantage if you have a limited time to bring the dog in, because the biggest boost initially was from kids reading to the dog. So, while a dog isn't a magic device, you can't just wave a wand and have kids read. In this really well done study, there was an advantage in reading to dogs and it's something that schools should think about.

Speaker 2: 12:40

That's Pet Science for this week. Hello everybody, here's some ways you can keep the science podcast free, number one in our show notes. Sign up to be a member of our Paw Pack Plus community. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. We have tons of bonus Bunsen and Beaker content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. It's tons of fun. Also, think about checking out our merch store. We've got the Bunsen stuffy, the Beaker stuffy and now the Ginger stuffy. That's right, ginger, the Science Cat, has a little replica. It's adorable. It's so soft, with the giant fluffy tail, safety glasses and a lab coat. And number three, if you're listening to the podcast on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating and tell your family and friends to listen to. Okay, on with the show.

Speaker 2: 13:33

Back to the interviews. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast, and I have Dr Amari Walker, franklin Research Chemist at RTI, international Doc. How are you doing today? I'm doing great, jason. How are you? I'm so good. I'm excited to talk to you. And where are you in the world? Where are you calling into the show from?

Speaker 1: 13:56

Oh, so I'm calling in from Durham, North Carolina.

Speaker 2: 14:00

Oh, North Carolina. So I introduced you as a doctor. What's your training in science? You mentioned you did some schooling and things like that. What's going on there?

Speaker 1: 14:11

Yeah, so the reason why I ended up in North Carolina was because I decided to pursue my doctoral degree in environmental engineering at Duke University, so I am now actually at RTI as a research chemist, and my dissertation was focused on the release, transformation and effects of polymer associated chemicals that are released from microplastics into the environment.

Speaker 2: 14:38

Were you a big science kid growing up, like, were you making potions and scooping up frogs and things like that? Or did science come a little later?

Speaker 1: 14:49

I would definitely say I started off loving science pretty early and it's almost a frog, but I would say a banana slug, oh oh, specific Northwest right.

Speaker 2: 14:59

I love banana slugs.

Speaker 1: 15:02

They are very weird and very interesting, but that was like one of the moments I can remember from like early science camps, where they made you kiss a banana slug so you can learn about the I can't remember what it's called the numbing effect that banana slugs release. So that's the. Yeah, that's my science love.

Speaker 2: 15:23

Can we talk about microplastics? Because that's your GM right. What are they? Why should we be concerned about microplastics?

Speaker 1: 15:34

So microplastics are, you know, just like the name itself, they're small pieces of plastic and they're really difficult to study because they're so small and because we don't necessarily have all the tools we need. But what we do know is that they're in every part of our environment at this point. They're formed because big pieces of plastic break down and they break down into smaller and smaller pieces of micro and nano plastics, and so, because of that, they can float on air, they can be traveled through our waterways, they can even be consumed by humans or by wildlife. So we just know everywhere that we look for them, whether that's the most remote locations in the world, like Mount Everest, to different, like you know, parts of, like glacial ice and Antarctica, we can now find microplastics just about everywhere, and that's kind of wild to think of, because plastic didn't really exist until the explosion that occurred for the Industrial Revolution, at least during World War Two. So this is a very, you know, small timeline in geologic scale, but it has now infiltrated the entire world.

Speaker 2: 16:47

What? Do you have some ideas? Why Like? Is it just because, like, everything is plastic, humans kind of have the. Instead of the Midas touch, we have the plastic touch.

Speaker 1: 16:58

Oh yeah, I would say that we, you know, you can. You can look around where you are right now. You could probably touch. You know a dozen different things that have plastic components in them, whether that's our building materials, our phones, you know our electronics, even our clothing that we're wearing, or the carpet underneath our feet it's all plastic, you know. And so if you think about that and you think about what are the most common microplastics that you see in the environment, most of those are actually related to clothing textiles. Those microfibers are usually the most consistent types that you would find that are being released from, like our laundry, into the environment.

Speaker 2: 17:38

Hmm, Do you do all plastics become microplastic? Like I've got this I don't know, it's this my students mock my giant water mug. I've got this water mug and it's plastic. It got from Costco. Like would this thing become microplastic or is it? Certain plastics are more susceptible to becoming microplastics.

Speaker 1: 18:02

All plastics can break down and degrade. I think what really is the question is how long it takes for a plastic to degrade, and that depends on, yes, the plastic type. And so when I mean type, there's, you know, things like different kinds of polymers, like polyethylene or polypropylene, or even polyvinylchloride, like PVC it's the pipes used for water and all of those have different kinds of you know functionality, and they really depend on also the chemicals that are added to the plastic to enhance their ability to stay together. And so plastic that is exposed to increased light, increased, higher temperatures, water those are all conditions that could increase the degradation on the surface of a plastic and end up releasing microplastics. So the moment that you see cracks or scratches on a plastic surface, you can say yes, microplastics are being released because that's a degradation process.

Speaker 2: 19:06

That's okay. So that's that's good to know. That's something I didn't know before. This might be a really silly question, but what do microplastics do? Why should we be concerned, like, if they're everywhere, are they doing bad things? Does that make sense as a question? I don't know.

Speaker 1: 19:30

I guess you could say what do microplastics research? What keeps researchers up at night? Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2: 19:37

What keeps me up at night is, like you know, marking and like school stuff, but I'd imagine like what keeps you up at night with these microplastic things.

Speaker 1: 19:49

Yeah. So I guess from the human health side there are a lot of things that we don't know about microplastics. We know that we are now finding them in all parts of our bodies. We can find them in our digestive system, you know. We're finding it in human feces. We're finding it now even in the placenta, so it's moving from from you know, to the, basically to the infant, and now we can find it in even parts of the liver, in the lungs. So the question is if we can find them in these places and is it potential for them to continue to accumulate in our body, and if they're small enough, can they end up traveling through our veins, which?

Speaker 1: 20:35

we have answered what.

Speaker 3: 20:39

They're like they can find it in blood.

Speaker 1: 20:40

They're surfing in their blood?

Speaker 2: 20:41

Yeah, they're surfing in their no.

Speaker 1: 20:43

Really, we've found them in blood, we found them in the vein tissue.

Speaker 2: 20:48

Oh, I've got the heebie-jeebies now. I'm so sorry. Keep going.

Speaker 1: 20:54

So those are the things that keep us up at night. So if they can travel through our blood, where can they accumulate? Could they accumulate in places like our brain, could they accumulate in other important organs. And you know what are the toxic effects of these microplastics? Like, do we need to reach a certain dose level before we start to see significant changes? Or are they correlated to other things? Like we're finding small correlations to irritable bowel syndrome? But you know we don't have all of the smoking gun to pin microplastics to certain health conditions. So really we're trying to figure out are microplastics harmful to the human body? Is it because of the particles themselves being so small, or their size or their shape? Or is it because these plastics all have different kinds of chemicals in them and most of these chemicals have not been tested very well for their toxicity?

Speaker 2: 21:47

It's like Pandora's Box. It's like okay, I didn't. All right, this is going to keep me up at night now, too, Is this? This reminds me of lead, Like, because I know a little bit about the lead poisoning that happened. Lead was in everything right, it was in gas, and scientists sounded the alarm and like obviously lead in your brain isn't good, but I'd imagine plastic in your brain isn't good either. Like there can't be. There has to be some kind of effect.

Speaker 1: 22:24

I don't know, we just have to find it at this point. What is, yeah, what could be happening, and you know it's funny. You mentioned lead too, because I saw, you know, an interesting little meme of the three different Spider-Man's pointing at each other, right, and one of them has, like you know, the boomers with asbestos and like Gen X with lead and the millennials with microplastics. They're all like pointing at each other like who did it?

Speaker 2: 22:52

Is that going to change things? Because right now I don't feel there's a big push by governments to do much about plastic. I don't know if you feel that way too, but like will. If there are devastating or there's like bad health effects from these microplastics, is that going to be a thick? Is that going to be the straw that breaks the camels back potentially, or do you have Anything? Are you less? Are you less pessimistic than me?

Speaker 1: 23:18

You know, I do have a little bit of hope. I think if we can find something that is demonstrating that certain plastics are problematic and unnecessary, then those might have an easier way to be regulated. It may not be plastics as a whole, but maybe it would be certain types of plastics, like foam containing plastics that you get like with to-go containers Like those are already slowly being regulated, depending on where you live in, you know, or single-use plastics. So I think there's ways that we can chip at this problem without necessarily saying get rid of every piece of plastic in this world, because, you know, there is still some utility to a lot of the things that we're using.

Speaker 1: 24:00

But you know, there are plenty of things that we can start working to address now that are unnecessary, avoidable and problematic. And so you know, we've already have, you know, quite a bit of other evidence that from a pollution side, a plastic pollution side, it's really difficult to clean up microplastics. And if we keep producing at the rates that we're producing, we're going to continue, you know, exponentially releasing microplastics into our environment. And so the best way to clean up microplastics is to clean up large plastics so that they don't degrade in our environment into these microplastics. So you know, it's also a huge environmental issue that we have to worry about.

Speaker 2: 24:41

Is this some of what you did your research on, or was it something different?

Speaker 1: 24:47

So my research in my PhD was focused on the environmental impacts of microplastics and mostly what are the chemicals that are placed in plastic? How are they released into water, especially fresh water? And when you age the plastic, do those chemicals increase in concentration into the water or do they even change? Can chemicals transform into new chemicals when you age plastic, and are those chemicals harmful?

Speaker 2: 25:17

So that was kind of right. That's an ambitious PhD thing there. What did you find? Can you tell us what you found Like? Was there anything surprising?

Speaker 1: 25:30

Yeah, I think that one of the most surprising projects that I had was where we took two different kinds of plastics and we put them in what's called a mesocosm and they're basically these big boxes in the middle of the Duke Forest. They're probably about gosh, I'd say, like four feet deep and then like four feet long, and that you know. It's just a huge box, big fish tank, basically filled with soil, with water, with all kinds of wildlife, like we had frogs jumping in there, we had tadpoles, fish, you know. Anything that wanted to walk from the forest into the box was in the box.

Speaker 1: 26:09

But it was basically a box meant to mimic a freshwater wetland system and we dosed microplastics into the water portion and we basically took samples over a year to see what kinds of chemicals would be released. And alongside that we did some work at the bench where we just did simulated water leachings with simulated freshwater and we aged the plastics as well to mimic the summer, where we were exposing the box to UV, to sunlight. So one of the things that we could see were, yes, we were finding chemicals that were being released, but while the bench was showing an increase in concentration of certain chemicals, these chemicals were actually decreasing in the mesocosm because environmental systems are complex, so there could be microbial life consuming it or biofilms accumulating on the surface of the microplastics. So there was just so many cool things that were happening and of course it was complex, but really interesting to understand the kinds of chemicals that are being released, and even some chemicals that were not intentionally placed in plastics but were actually still being released into water.

Speaker 2: 27:23

And those chemicals came out of the plastic breakdown process Like they were made in the process. Am I on the right track there or no?

Speaker 1: 27:31

Kind of yeah, so these were chemicals based on the company that they said that they didn't have it on their list as something that they put in the plastic but is likely due to their source material, and so it was like a byproduct of their original feedstock that this chemical came from that we're now seeing being released in higher and higher quantities over time. So that was a really interesting one to show hey company, you have this chemical in here that you didn't even know. So there's plenty of other examples, probably if we keep looking people not being aware of the chemicals in their plastic.

Speaker 2: 28:10

That's you know. The more you know, the better. I guess companies can regulate themselves or the government can do regulation.

Speaker 1: 28:20

Oh yeah, and even just the idea of exposing a polymer to UV light, you see totally different things happening. We see even the breakdown of the polymer itself changed and the types of chemicals that could have been released and stuff. So it's, you know, you got to be really thorough with environmental studies for plastics because it's complex. There's tons of chemicals originally in there and there's tons of chemicals that can form with different environmental scenarios.

Speaker 2: 28:49

Did any of the? Were you concerned about any of your findings? Was there anything that was like a red flag beyond oh this chemical shouldn't have been here type thing Like was any of those breakdown byproducts dangerous or Well? I'd say that Is that too complicated for the system. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1: 29:12

Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's a great question. There were chemicals that I was worried about. Most of the chemicals that I was concerned with are because there's no toxicity data, so we don't really know if they're harmful or not, because they haven't been studied very well to determine if they're toxic or harmful to the environment, and so that's probably what disturbed me the most. One of the unintentionally added substances was one that I was a little nervous about, because it is kind of associated with another more harmful chemical. They're typically co-located in the same plant, but at the concentrations that it's being released at, it's not necessarily like a red flag that this is super harmful. But I do think that these are all the things that we were finding merited further study, merited further toxicity information. So that's really what I hope for, at least for future steps for somebody to undertake.

Speaker 2: 30:11

Okay, I got it. I got it Well. Thanks for sharing some of your research. I've never talked to somebody who is that deep into plastic and microplastic science, so it's fascinating to me. Can I ask you a question about biodegradable plastic, even though it just is in the back of my mind when you were mentioning UV light and plastics? How are scientists and engineers getting towards the biodegradable plastics? Are there big strides being made or is it like teeny tiny baby steps every so often?

Speaker 1: 30:48

Yeah, I think that when we think about biodegradable or compostable or bioplastics I think those three terms always get a little convoluted and kind of combined with each other. A lot of people assume that if something's a bioplastic that it can degrade, Usually it just means instead of a plastic being made from oil and gas, it's made from a plant resource like cornstarch instead of oil. Yeah, but it doesn't. Usually it forms the same polymer that takes forever to break down and stuff like that. So, but for biodegradable and compostable, those really depend on where they're placed.

Speaker 1: 31:30

Compostable plastics usually have to go to a compostable facility and we don't really have that many, at least in the United States I think there's less than like 400 compostable facilities in the country, and so it's really hard to actually get those plastics where they need to go to actually degrade at the same at their expected rates. So they're essentially the same kind of plastic if you throw them in the landfill. But with biodegradable I think there is a lot of work that's being done. The problem is, you know, sometimes it's only biodegradable in very certain scenarios, like it needs to be a certain temperature, it needs the certain kinds of enzymes or bacteria present to break them down. So it is really like kind of like location dependent where that plastic ends up like. Some of them are great for like soil, but some might not be so great for being, you know, in the sea, and of course plastic ends up just about everywhere. So it's tricky.

Speaker 2: 32:27

Okay, that's well, thank you, I appreciate that. I was all excited because I bought a box of sandwich bags for sandwiches and it was like compostable or biodegradable or something it said on it. And then I was like, oh cool, I'll just chuck this in our compost bin. And then I did some reading. I was like, oh, wait a sec, it's like you can't just put it in with your tomatoes and things like that, like your leftover onions, whatever.

Speaker 1: 32:54

I was like, oh, okay, I see what you wouldn't put them there, yeah, yeah, especially because there's still plastics, even if they can break down. It usually means they break down quicker into microplastics and those could still last a while. And they have found studies where microplastics could travel into the roots of like spinach. So maybe that's so great for agriculture. You know it's another big question of like all of our agricultural fields have plastic. You know plastic lining like what does that mean? We don't really know.

Speaker 1: 33:27

But and even what are what kinds of soils are used to, you know, be applied as fertilizer? They usually include some kind of bio solid sludge that comes from our wastewater facilities that filter out the waste. That includes a lot of microplastics that's applied to our agriculture. So, yeah, those biodegradable bags would probably not be so good in the compostable garbage and they also have additional chemicals that may not be studied, because biodegradable and compostable usually require, you know, different kinds of chemicals to keep the polymer structure together and those may not have been well regulated either. So sometimes we're opening up an additional putting doors box by trying to create certain kinds of alternatives. So we just need to be more well thought out with our innovations and consult all of it. You know everybody, we all need to be in the conversation.

Speaker 2: 34:22

So, doc, you do a bunch of science communication, you have a YouTube channel and you also just wrote a book. I was wondering if you could talk about those for folks who maybe want to know more.

Speaker 1: 34:34

Yeah, I'd be happy to. So my YouTube channel started a few years ago and it's really focused on plastic pollution and really helping people understand what are the problems with plastics and microplastics and what are some of the solutions. So it's really meant to give some of the newest research that's been put out about plastic pollution and then to follow up that work on my YouTube channel.

Speaker 1: 34:59

I was recently asked to write a book on plastics and my I was able to get a really great co author, dr Jenna Jenback, to help me write this, and so this is actually a pretty nice short afternoon, I would say, like an afternoon read or a weekend read book. That's really meant to be a deep dive you know, brief deep dive into why plastic has been produced for so long, what's the history of it, how much are we making, where does it go and why is it a problem for our environment, why is it a problem for our society and what are the things, what are the policies currently in place are on their way and one of the things that we can do to kind of address this for for the future. And so that book just came out and it's available on at Barnes and Noble's, amazon. Even independent bookstores can order it for you as well, but it is called plastics, so it shouldn't. It's not too too hard to find.

Speaker 2: 35:55

Sweet, I've got the cover. Your co authors, jenna Jenback. Is that correct, correct? Okay, and there is a one of those like soda, can you know? Like, the things that the dolphins would get stuck in are the birds the? The six ring thing on the front is that. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's all. That's like the, the standard of plastic pollution across the world.

Speaker 1: 36:23

I think it's definitely one of the ones that people can resonate with, Because I remember growing up and cutting those ring cans to remember to be like, okay, to protect wildlife, you know, in case this ends up in the wrong place, you know. Another one that probably resonates also is straws. You know being stuck in turtles and all that good stuff. But you know that all that kind of imagery to think about what are, what is the impact of some of the things that we do, that's so innocent in our minds.

Speaker 2: 36:52

In a way it's fundamentally changed. Like where I live, you cannot get those rings. They're actually made of like cardboard. They have cardboard rings that hook the cans together. That's great, and I think there's now a straw band in Canada, something, something. I know it is very hard to find plastic straws. They're all those paper ones which people are still getting used to because they, like they disintegrate in your drink if you leave them for too long.

Speaker 3: 37:21

Oh yeah, I don't know if you have trouble with the paper straws.

Speaker 2: 37:29

I'm willing to sacrifice for the animals, though, like I'm willing to cut down my plastic use with those.

Speaker 1: 37:35

Well, sometimes I try to pack my reusable straw just just to mitigate some of that, those issues. But I, you know, I think what is it called like throwaway culture is just so ingrained in all of us that I remember going to a conference a couple months ago, got my do you know? Got my brand new reusable straw stainless steel, put it in you know a cup that I ordered for coffee, and then just threw the whole thing away with the straw and I was like, wow, I really had a moment where I was just not fully in awareness of the fact that this is reusable. So lesson learned, that was, that was a really sad day.

Speaker 2: 38:15

I think that's common, though you get used to just chucking stuff.

Speaker 3: 38:19

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 38:20

Yeah, this has nothing to do with throwing. Maybe you might get a chuckle out of this in our listeners, might. Our oldest son, duncan, he would. We would send him with like a little meal that had a. He needed a fork to use, and I would send him with one of our metal forks. This is like when he was in upper elementary, elementary, and then after like three weeks I was like where are all our forks? All of our forks were gone, and that's because he was just throwing all of the forks away in the garbage after every single meal. We had no forks left and I was like man, what are you doing? And he's just like he was oblivious that what he was doing was was wrong. So, anyways, that was to buy some more forks.

Speaker 1: 39:15

Oh no that's so frustrating. I get that, though. I really do.

Speaker 2: 39:21

If the plastic, micro plastic lady can throw away her metal straw, I guess we can give our son, who was, you know, throwing away our forks, a bit of slack.

Speaker 1: 39:29

So yeah, just a little bit of grace we can give it. We can give all of ourselves grace here. It's going to take some time to de program.

Speaker 2: 39:36

Is that the main message of all of this? Like we should just try because, like on our own, we can only affect so much within our day to day. But we can still try, right, we can try.

Speaker 1: 39:50

Yeah, I mean, I do think that small changes can still make a difference and, of course, I think that at least the primary burden should not be on consumers, they should be on government and industry to make these changes. So, really like the ways that we can try are by talking about it amongst our friends, amongst our family, to just say, hey, like this is an issue that we should be aware of. And so when we're thinking about how do we vote with our voice, our dollar, you know, you know, like our own, what we will be finding important to ourselves. That's where we can make change. So if we know, you know, we can support local bans or local fees for certain bags.

Speaker 1: 40:31

I know in Canada you all are much more, you know, advanced with a lot of the legislation that's out, along with, you know, even supporting the global treaty for plastic pollution that's currently in the works with United Nations. So that's a big way that we can, all you know, as a planet Earth, can try and work on supporting that and asking legislation to support that in some way and work to reduce our issues with plastic pollution. So if we can do that, we can also make a difference with our dollar If we want to buy reusable mugs and cups and bags. Work on, like, what kind of reusable containers we can get from takeout restaurants. I know that there are some systems in certain locations where you can get, like, a returnable container. That's not always true for everywhere you live, but that's that's one that's really interesting and innovative. And then also, you know, buying with intention, like slowing down on fast fashion, because, like I said, textiles are a huge portion of plastic pollution, of microplastics. So you know, just thinking about the things that we do, hey, you'll be happy, doc.

Speaker 2: 41:38

I wear my dress clothes until they fall off my body. So there you go. I am not throwing away my stuff until it is absolutely necessary.

Speaker 1: 41:49

I mean that's pretty great. I've got like five work shirts and I, you know, rotate them as my Monday to Friday Smart.

Speaker 2: 41:58

You know, if there's one thing about maybe the upcoming, like dystopian future perhaps we're heading towards is the one uniform that's what I'm hoping for is like. That would make my life so much simpler, you know, like the one jumpsuit that everybody wears in the dystopian future would cut out so much stress on my life of having to like think about what to wear. It's the one dress, the one jumpsuit.

Speaker 1: 42:23

So oh yeah, I mean, I think that would make things so much easier and I think that's it's not necessarily like what we're advocating for and something like a treaty, but it's something similar because, you know, every chemical has a very well, every chemical industry has a very special way of making a plastic, and so why can't these all be streamlined to have the same recipe? You know, if we could, if we could, you know, say, a plastic bottle is made with these X chemicals and only these X chemicals, then we could even actually start better regulating the things that we're exposed to. But you know everything you touch. You know every phone has different components. Even the plastic components are different amongst phone types. So you know, if we can't figure out ways to standardize what we're exposed to, then it's going to be very difficult for us to regulate.

Speaker 2: 43:09

I see that If everything, if all the plastics are the same, you can make one solution to the mitigation of it too, if that's possible. I see around 100,000 different little piddly ones.

Speaker 1: 43:23

I mean, you know, if you can even just whittle it down to. There's almost 3,500 formulations of plastics, you know. Maybe about seven of them are the most you know widely used. But if we can work on eliminating them to smaller and smaller ones that are actually recyclable, that could be continually reused, that's also another step in the right direction. So there's so many things we could work on. It's just going to take people with innovative thinking and organizations willing to work together to address it.

Speaker 2: 43:58

I like that, talking about it, talking to our friends talking about it, Though I still am holding out hope for the jumpsuit of the future. So just throwing that out there. I'll put our pets on it.

Speaker 2: 44:12

There you go. We'll make sure there's a link to your book, doc, in the show notes to our show, as there will be a link to your YouTube channel in the show notes. So, folks, you can pick up the book and check out the YouTube channel in the show notes. Remember, don't be clicking on your phone while you're driving. We have some standard questions we ask our guests on the science podcast and one of them is to share a pet story from their life with us. Could you do that, doc?

Speaker 1: 44:42

Yeah, I can. So I would say my story would be the foster win of my cat, poppy. So during the pandemic, I think, a lot of us said, oh my gosh, I need to go get something furry to calm us, calm me down. So I ended up fostering cats because my husband at the time had never had a cat before. So I was like this will be a great introduction. And by the second cat she was very sweet and wonderful and it was actually the day before she was about to get neutered and adopted by a family she ended up jumping out of our second story window and ran away for at least a week. Oh my God Right. And so we spent every day looking for her and I think by the end of it my husband had said I think he was praying. He was like, if we can find this cat, I will adopt it. And we found the cat that day that he made that prayer and so I said, ok, well, that's our cat now. So we said, well, we will take her. And so we have Poppy forever.

Speaker 2: 45:51

You know, poppy was listening around the corner with, like some kind of like listening device, waiting for your husband to say that.

Speaker 1: 45:59

Absolutely. And it turns out she was in the apartment next door, really.

Speaker 2: 46:04

Is that?

Speaker 1: 46:05

true, is that true?

Speaker 2: 46:06

Yeah, so well, this was a building next apartment building next door, I thought it would be like you'd be next door building and Poppy's, like got her ear to the wall. That a few more days, we're going to break them. A few more days, a few more days and they'll. Ah, it's time.

Speaker 1: 46:22

I'll show up now, right, not that close, but you know the building next door and they she found somebody else who had a cat and just took over their place and eat all their food. So I don't know, I don't know how, long it took for her to get there.

Speaker 2: 46:36

That's due. Cats show up and they're like this is my home, now I am here.

Speaker 1: 46:40

Yeah, yeah, that's just very much her. What color is Poppy? She's a tortoise shell. She's cream, black and a little bit of orange in her. So she's very feisty.

Speaker 2: 46:53

I love it For folks that listen to the science podcast and follow us on social media. I've spoken before about our cat, Ginger. I didn't grow up with cats and we got a cat and man. Cats are cool. I didn't know they were so cool, but they're neat. They're pretty neat.

Speaker 1: 47:06

I love them. I mean I love. I love cats and dogs, but cats are, cats are fun and in our easy and different ways than than dogs.

Speaker 2: 47:15

Yeah, they're all our maintenance. Yes, that is uh-huh, uh-huh. Well, thanks for sharing. Thanks for sharing your pet story with us. The other standard question we ask is for our guests to share a super fact with us. It's something that they know. When they tell people, maybe they save it for a cocktail party or something. It blows people's minds. Do you have a super fact for us?

Speaker 1: 47:41

The one that that comes to mind right now is that less than 10% of all plastic is actually recycled, and most plastic is, you know, not actually recyclable.

Speaker 2: 47:51

um, right now, with the technology that we have, so night I, I, I know a little bit about this, but from somebody who's made definitely more of an expert on this than I am, that 90% is burnt, buried or pitched in ditches in water, right Like the other yeah, okay, landfills and incinerators, um and yeah, and end up in the environment. Yeah, that's not great. I mean, that's a super fact for everybody to know. Um yeah it makes. It makes this discussion so important, like good grief, like can you imagine?

Speaker 2: 48:35

can you imagine if, like something else, only 10% of it uh could go away? Like how, how much of a disaster it would be?

Speaker 1: 48:44

I mean like how much that we continually use every day, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 48:47

Like think about dog poop. Think about dog poop everybody Think about. If only 10% of people picked up their dog poop and the rest never, ever went away like how gross.

Speaker 1: 48:58

Oh, it's the nightmare yeah.

Speaker 2: 49:01

That's what we need to do. That's what we need to do. That's what we need to do. That's what we need to do. That's what we need to do is the dog poop analogy. I could already, I could already see commercials of like, just like, mounds of dog poop piling up and piling up, and people are swimming in the ocean and there's dog poop floating everywhere. And then it's the analogy to the 10% plastic recycling.

Speaker 1: 49:23

I think this is genius.

Speaker 2: 49:24

Come on. I know there's people in Hollywood that listen to the show. This is a free idea. Come on.

Speaker 1: 49:30

Yes, please, and any animator that wants to make that happen like. I think, oh no, or cartoon, you know from day one.

Speaker 2: 49:45

Be a good visual. Okay, that's a super fact. Thanks, doc.

Speaker 1: 49:50

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 49:52

Well, doc, it's been an absolute treat to talk to you today. This has been a very educational, topical and fun. Are you on social media anywhere?

Speaker 1: 50:02

People follow you somewhere on the yeah, so I guess the many, the many different names for X or for so called Twitter, or previously known as Twitter. I am there on at doctor underscore and Mari Walker spelled I am a R? I, and then also on Instagram as well for the same thing doctor underscore and Mari Walker. So I've got that. I've got a tick talk. Of course, I have the YouTube channel. If you look up in Mari Walker, you can find me on on that YouTube channel as well.

Speaker 2: 50:36

Thank you so much for agreeing to chat with us on the science podcast. It's been a treat and you are an amazing person, thank you. Thank you, jason, it was fun. That's it for this week's show. Sorry, no family section this week. It was a wild week for all three of us and we couldn't find time to get it together before I had to release the podcast. Don't worry, family section will be back next week. I'd like to give a big shout out to the pop pack and the top tier of our community, the top dogs for supporting us and all of our pop pack for supporting us. It's the way that we can keep the science podcast free. Check out our show notes if you want to join our community, chris. Let's hear the top dog names.

Speaker 3: 51:14

Bianca Hyde, mary Rider, tracy Domingu, susan Wagner, andrew Lynn, helen Chin, Tracy Halberg, amy C, jennifer Smathers, laura Stephenson, holly Birch, brenda Clark, Anne Yuchita, peggy McKeel, terry Adam, debbie Anderson, sandy Brimer, tracy Linebaugh, mary Ann McNally, Fun Lisa, shelly Smith, julie Smith, diane Allen, breanne Haas, linda Sherry, carol McDonald, Catherine Jordan, courtney Proven, donna Craig, wendy, diane Mason and Luke Liz Button, Kathy Zerker and Ben Rathart.

Speaker 2: 52:00

Our science, empathy and cuteness.