The Biggest Wellness & Environment “Red Pill” Might Be Plastic

Adiel Gorel is joined by Dr. Chris DeArmitt, PhD, the leading authority on plastics, microplastics and the environment, in one of the most “red pill” conversations of the year. According to Dr. DeArmitt, plastics aren’t as dangerous for humans or the environment as we think; or have been told for the past 40 years. Further, Dr. DeArmitt argues that many of the programs and technologies we use to combat plastic pollution are more dangerous than plastic itself. Sounds crazy? Dr. DeArmitt argues that this is because of a very successful propaganda campaign over several years to convince us that plastic needs to go, whatever the cost. Whether you agree or not, this is one episode you don’t want to miss. At the very least, it will get you thinking.

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The Biggest Wellness & Environment “Red Pill” Might Be Plastic

World’s Leading Plastic Expert Pulls Back The Veil On Plastic and Micro-Plastics

It is great to be back here with you. We are going to talk about a topic that affects every single one of us, on how to better ourselves in light of what is going on with this topic. We have Dr. Chris DeArmitt here with us. Welcome to the show, Chris.

Thank you, Adiel. Thanks for having me on the show.

From Scientist To Crusader: Path To Debunking The Low-Impact Reality Of Plastics

Chris, probably best would be, I know you get this question probably all the time, but if you can give us the path that brought you here.

What we are doing here on this podcast is not my job. My job is being a scientist and solving problems. That is what I have done for my whole career. As part of that, I found out that when you understand a problem really well, usually the solution is rather obvious. It is really understanding it, which is the key. That is hard work. Once you find the facts, often solutions just present themselves. That is my job. I am a career scientist.

One day, my daughters walked through the door, and they said that they had been told that plastics do not degrade by their teacher. That is just a lie. It is not true. There are thousands of studies on plastic degradation and biodegradation. I have been on TV on 60 Minutes talking about how plastic of a certain type should not have been put in the body because it degrades too quickly. I knew in my soul that that was just wrong. It makes me angry. First, I was angry with the teachers.

I thought, “They are just people like any old parent or any member of the public. They do not have science. They do not have time to read the science, even if they were scientists.” I went on a crusade to check what our kids are being taught at school. I ended up reading 6,000 scientific studies. I have written two books. I am not here to sell books. Both of my books are available for free in different languages online. You can download them for free.

I want to see them both. Show them one at a time, please.

The first one is The Plastics Paradox. I wrote that just to get things off my chest because I was angry. I have to be very angry to write a book because it is very annoying to write books, and it takes a lot of work for free.

The second.

I will get to that. I wrote that one to get it off my chest, and then it exploded. People started reading it, and it got very popular, and professors were teaching from it, so they asked me to update it, and that is the second book, Shattering the Plastics Illusion. This one is based on reading 6,000 studies. When I was writing, I sent it to professors all around the world in the Netherlands, the UK, Sweden, and Australia. They all endorsed it.

Some of them even asked to join my nonprofit, where scientists work unpaid. We do not get a single penny of money. We read thousands of studies. There are famous professors, a toxicologist, and so forth. Then we share the science for free. That has been my journey. I have wasted a thousand hours of my life every year for six years, just because I think the truth should count for something.

Tell us the truth. Tell us about the misconception. Tell us about it. We are all very eager to learn from you because microplastics, plastics in general, are a hot topic, and the prevailing common knowledge is what the teachers taught your daughters.

One of the things that surprised me the most is, let us say, you are trying to solve a problem, right? We use too much stuff. I am always buying junk from Amazon that I do not need. Let us say that we can all agree we should reduce impact and not buy extra stuff, not be wasteful. Let us say you are worried about materials usage and waste, which a lot of people say they are worried about. They say we are drowning in plastic. We have to use less plastic. That would be the answer. If you look at a graph, you look at the data, how much of the materials we use is plastic? Can you have a guess as a percentage?

I am just going to throw it completely, I mean, it’s almost random, but I would say 15%.

It is half a percent. One half of 1%. It is less than 1% by weight or volume. That is the plastic we use, the materials, and also the percentage of waste we create. I am not trying to say we do not use too much plastic. We probably do. If anyone was genuinely concerned about materials and waste, they would not be posting all day online about plastic. They will be talking about the other 99.5% as well.

That shows you that when somebody is posting against plastic on that basis, that is not their real motive. Their real motive is that they are against plastic, either because they are corrupt or because they are paid to be. It gives you an example. When people’s actions do not match what they are saying, then you have reason to be suspicious. That is one example, and that really surprised me. If you look at the environmental impact.

The only way to know what causes more or less impact because everything has some impact. Everything we do has some impact. The only way to know what causes more or less is to look at a life cycle analysis. That adds up everything. It is materials, transportation, fossil fuel, greenhouse gas, waste, litter, recycling, everything goes into this life cycle analysis of a car, a hairdryer, or a shopping bag. If you look at hundreds of those, you find independent studies reviewing hundreds of those, you find that plastic has the lowest impact in nine cases out of 10.

There are alternatives to plastic, but they cost more, and nine times out of 10, they increase impact. It is not just a little bit. On average, they increase waste by four times, greenhouse gas by three times, and fossil fuel use by twice as much. You certainly can pay extra to replace plastic, but when you do, you are making things worse. That is the problem. The people who care are paying extra to increase impact because they have been told lies.

This is already in the first couple of minutes, you are breaking many common myths that the public agrees upon, that the media, of course, we are all more skeptical of the media, much more so than we were before. Especially starting in 2020, the level of skepticism of the media has grown quite a bit, but nevertheless, I am surprised by everything you said. Half a percent, I am already processing it since you said it, and I am thinking my brain is churning and turning and saying, “I am very surprised.” What are you talking about? Plastic bags, hair dryers, half a percent, really? What is the other 99 and a half?

Most of it is concrete. About 80% is concrete and rocks and stuff like that that we use. Metals are about 10%, and wood is about 6%. Something like that, it is in the book. It is kind of amazing. I wrote about this in the book because you think that only half a percent is plastic? Everything I touch is plastic. My pen is plastic. My clothes might be polyester. The funny thing is, I am sitting in a building right now, my house. To me, the walls are invisible. They do not count. The whole frame of my house is made of wood. The walls are made of plaster, which is ceramic.

The glass is made of silica. All of that s***, all the metal, the beams that are in the house, the load-bearing beams are made of steel. All of this is invisible. All I think about is the plastic mouse in my hand or the plastic pen in my hand. It is like we erase 99% of everything because these are not things we touch. We do not relate to our walls, our windows, our wooden beams, or our patio. We only think about the things we are touching, and many of the things we touch are plastic.

Even in the picture, even in the video right now, you are wearing glasses, and I am wearing glasses that are made out of plastic. It jumps at you, and maybe you are right. Maybe that is what you touch, so it creates this illusion that it is very prevalent.

That is one thing that shocked me, and the fact that 90% of the time it has the least impact. Those are two of the misconceptions. My audience struggles with this when I present around the world. I give keynote talks for all kinds of people, and they say, “Why is this the opposite of what I’m hearing?” I say exactly what you say. I say, “Tell me how many scientific studies you’ve read.” The answer is zero. None of these people has ever read a single study. I say, “Where is 100% of the information you believe now coming from?” They say, “The media.” I say, “That’s interesting. Do you trust the media?” They say, “No, I would never trust the media. No one would be that gullible.” A hundred percent of what you believe now is coming from a source that you say you do not trust.

The Texas-Sized Lie: Debunking The Ocean Island Myth And Billionaire Funding

Let me ask you this. Two things I am going to branch into, and you are going to run with each one of these branches, I am sure. Number one, again, from the media, I read zero studies exactly about this. All the s*** in the ocean, there are islands of plastic floating in the ocean that are growing to the size of a small country. That is one angle or one question. The other one is that we are inhaling through the air and eating and drinking microplastics. Our system is inundated with microplastics. How do we get them out? A third direction that I am going to take you, you already pulled the rug from under my feet in the very first sentence when you said the teacher told your daughter that plastic does not degrade, and that is not true. Three giant question marks.

Happy to help, that is the reason I read 6,000 studies, because that is exactly what I get. Let us say I prove one point about materials use, and I say, “What about litter?” and I say, “I don’t know, I have to go read the science.” “What about microplastics?” “I don’t know, I have to read the science,” and so that is how this got carried away. I seem to be the only person who is stupid enough to read 6,000 studies to cover all of those things you just mentioned. The first one, ocean plastic, there is no floating island the size of Texas. There has never been a picture of the gyre.

It does not show up on a satellite. They are claiming there is a thing, an island the size of Texas. A satellite can see a cigarette package. That is the resolution of a satellite now. It can see a pack of cards on the floor, and it has not found a floating island the size of Texas. That was made up. There is a whole PhD thesis by Kim De Wolf, and she explains how that myth came about. However, there is plastic in the ocean. Let us talk about it. We are told that the ocean is drowning in plastic, and the United Nations is having meetings and meetings.

They are flying thousands of people around the world to have meetings about this emergency. If you look at the amount of plastic that is going into the ocean and then compare it to the amount of water in the ocean, you can get an idea of how big this problem is. I did that calculation, and here is the calculation. I will make an analogy because when you talk about millions of tons, no one can imagine it. Here is the calculation. If you took eight billion people, that is the population of the world.

Imagine you have a world with no other animals, just 8 billion people. Now you add one squirrel or one rabbit. You say the world is drowning in squirrels. We are being told that the ocean is drowning in plastic, and they are adding one squirrel worth per 8 billion people a year, and claiming that it is an emergency. That is an exaggeration so absurd that anyone who made it would be called an outright liar, a charlatan, and a scam. I mean, the worst words you can think of.

That is an obscene lie to tell people that we are drowning in one squirrel among 8 billion people. That is the lie we are being told. The funny thing is that these United Nations people and all these environmental groups, they are flying around, they have made the same impact as one billion PET bottles flying around, talking about an emergency that does not exist that they made up so that they can have holidays all the time, presumably flying around the world.

Let us just stay with this one point, the ocean and the size of Texas floating, and you saying, really, the quantitative is really like one rabbit for 8 billion people. That is the scale. What is the motivation for those exaggerations?

That is the most common question that I would get at the end of my talks, who is paying for this and “What is the motivation?” I have identified three different ones. One is that I have been told by lawyers that competing industries like the glass and the iron industry and the paper industry are paying for some of this. I have not seen the documents myself, but I have been told by very reliable lawyers that that is the case. That would be natural. Everyone wants to earn business. No surprises there. The second one that is a bit more surprising is that billionaires are funding it. It is not a secret.

Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates have their anti-plastic. They are very public about being anti-plastic. I could not understand why. I asked ChatGPT, “Why are billionaires against plastic when it has the lowest impact?” ChatGPT said this, I am not a political person. I do not understand political motives. I am just a scientist. I only understand logic. Anyway, so I asked ChatGPT, and it said, “This is how the billionaires think. Plastic is made from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels mean global warming.

Therefore, we have to get rid of plastic.” The problem with that thinking is that when you replace plastic, you have to use twice as much fossil fuel to make paper, metal, or glass. They are using five-year-old thinking. “This has an impact, therefore we have to get rid of it,” without asking themselves the question, “What happens when I do get rid of it? What happens when I have to use an alternative?” The answer is that things get much worse, much more impact. It is foolish thinking. I like to joke with my audience. I say, “I hope one day I’m a billionaire and I can spend $10 million to campaign against my own wishes,” which is what these idiots are doing. It is foolish.

There is an analogy here. As we talked about before we started recording, in this show, we have been doing a deep dive in the past year and a half into circadian biology, into the effect of the photons we get from the sun on our eyes, skin, body in general, on the harms that blue light at night can cause our circadian rhythm, etc.

I have read some studies on that, too, yeah.

In this domain, there is another strange thing, which is not espoused by all the billionaires, but apparently, again, I did not read any studies. I am only relaying what I heard from good sources that there is a notion. You are a scientist. You come from engineering, physics, and math. There is an element of logic to both of these disciplines. There are people in my world, the Silicon Valley world, that are what I can call the stupid smart. They can calculate many equations. They can code very successfully.

They can create a billion-dollar startup, but they are also, at the same time, stupid. What does that mean? Their IQ may be high if you give them an IQ test, but the level of looking at reality is so limited as to become stupid. What I am trying to say is this. Apparently, and again, this is hearsay, some billionaires said, “We have an issue with global warming. Easy peasy. Create a shade between the sun and the Earth. Put an awning, so to speak, on the earth so the sun rays do not hit it as much, and we fix the problem.” That is the smartest stupid.

It’s the same with direct air capture, direct carbon capture from the air. No scientist believes in that. Yet they are funding it with billions of dollars.

So true. The thing about creating a hat, a cap, a visor for the planet in light of circadian biology and what the plants need and what humans need, in the end, it absolutely destroys and hampers life on the planet for the notion of global warming, “Let’s just put a barrier.” There are even, I am not going to get into that, but apparently some people are even trying to put a barrier by spraying a certain particle, aluminum, which gets absorbed by the soil. That is the same level of stupid.

It is insane. These things can be checked. Now everyone has access to information. You could ask ChatGPT, you could do a Google search, and you can find these things that I am talking about in two seconds. There is really no excuse for these people. As an example, they have been doing experiments continuously since the 1950s. They have been sailing a ship with a small net behind it. Guess how long. It’s only a meter wide, this net, because it’s looking for plankton, measuring plankton levels. Every time it gets a piece of plastic in it, they have to stop the ship and pull it out. They put a note in the logbook, “We found a piece of plastic.” They have been sailing the ship since 1950. Guess how long you have to sail to find one piece of a plastic bag?

Given the information so far, I am going to say three months.

They have to sail 100,000 miles, which is four times around planet Earth, to find one piece of a plastic bag. Every day, I see a picture of a turtle with a bag around its neck, Photoshopped. This is the size of the lie we are being told every day. They are generating a fake emergency so they can pay themselves money.

Microplastics Are Just Dust: Exposing The Non-Toxic Particle Hysteria

Maybe you are not the only one getting useless stuff on Amazon. Maybe the turtles are doing it as well.

They are ordering shopping bags themselves. The second point, microplastics. Let me ask you this. One trick when you are looking at any subject is to make sure that you are looking at the whole picture, a holistic picture, as you just said. Think about the consequences. Do you lie awake at night worried about the dust you are breathing?

It depends on what I am being exposed to. If I get exposed to enough articles, media, and news, I might, but right now I do not.

During this interview, you and I will breathe maybe a million particles each. We do not care. Nobody has ever spent one second of their life worrying about it. If I were to say that plastic is one hundred thousandth of the dust that you already do not care about, one hundred thousandth of the dust we eat and breathe is plastic, and it is non-toxic. It has been tested. This is one of the problems. People think this has been presented as a new, unstudied threat, and that the science is evolving. We have gaps in the research. It is not true. We have more than 2,000 studies on plastic particles spanning 50 years.

I found the answer to every question you can imagine, right down to whether your dogs and cats are breathing it. What happens is that it is this tiny fraction of the non-toxic part of the dust. When you get it inside you, it goes right through, just like all the other particles do. It is inert. It is non-toxic. Just to give you one extreme example, PFAS, they are talking about PFAS, and do not use Teflon pans. They took rats. This is how you do toxicity testing. You feed stuff to animals. They fed these rats 25% of their diet was PTFE, PFAS, 25% for three months. It was very painful. Guess what happened?

Nothing. No effect, completely non-toxic. The study said this would be great for weight loss. You could eat 25% PTFE in your diet. It is completely non-toxic. It will go right through you. You will feel full, so you will not eat as much food, and you will lose weight. Wonderful. That is what they said. I do not recommend it, but that is what the authors of the study said. That is how non-toxic it is.

They have done the same studies on polyethylene, on PET, on PVC, on polypropylene. People are out there claiming that plastic is toxic, which it is not, because the studies are clear. Some of the least toxic things they have ever measured are plastic. Table salt is 1,000 times more toxic than plastic. We are all happy to put it on our French fries. There is an example, right? People die every year from table salt.

You know that some people even kill themselves by eating. You just have to drink a large bottle of soy sauce that contains enough table salt to kill you. Nobody cares. Nobody thinks about it as toxic. The toxic level of plastic has not even been found because they fed more and more and more to rats, and nothing ever happened. They do not even know the toxic amount because it is so extremely high that it is not even possible to measure it.

To try to find a palatable analogy, we are being told so much that fiber is good for us, fiber in food. Some fiber is soluble, and some is non-soluble. They say, “The non-soluble just passes through you, but it adds bulk to your elimination. It’s really good.” Isn’t that an analogy to what you’re saying now about plastics?

Yes. It just passes through the same as a rock particle would. Here is the funny part. If you look at what else is in the dust, it is things that are toxic. It is lead, it is cadmium, it is mercury, it is a lot of dead skin cells if you are inside. Here is the other thing. Some of the things in dust, some of the really major components like quartz, that come from, if you are out in the garden or you are a farmer farming the field, you can breathe enough quartz to give yourself cancer. That is one of the largest components of dust, and nobody cares.

Nobody cares about the huge amount of stuff that is proven to cause cancer. Wood dust causes cancer. That is a proven fact. It is an IARC Class 1 carcinogen, and nobody has ever suggested that we ban trees. Wood dust is carcinogenic, causes cancer, let us ban trees, it is obvious. This is another proof that nobody cares about plastic particles and their toxicity, because if they did care about particles and toxicity, they would be talking about the huge amounts of things that are toxic and cause cancer, not about the tiny amounts of stuff that are completely non-toxic and do not cause cancer.

By the way, it goes in a cycle, because if we do take it seriously that some people are actually trying to block the sun, spring, and aluminum in it, we are breathing that too.

That is right. That is a microplastic. It’s just a load of nonsense. It has been tested for 50 years. There is not a single study. I have read 600 studies myself, unpaid, and never seen a single study showing any credible evidence of harm. Here are a couple of interesting facts. One is 93% of media articles say that microplastics are a definite threat. The vast majority of scientific studies and scientific consensus is that there is no threat. It has been scientifically proven that the media have lied to us. The other thing is, it just does not make any sense to obsess about a tiny amount of non-toxic particles.

They have basically a marketing stunt. Everything else is called dust. Try searching for micro-wood. No hits. Micro-metal, no hits. Micro-glass, no hits. Micro-quartz, no hits. Microplastic, 2,000 hits. They took a small, small part of dust, gave it a special name to make it sound special and scary when it is not. This is the tragedy. We are spending $200 million a year of our tax money on bad microplastic science that has already been done. Now it has just been proposed that the government wants to spend another 150 million to answer questions that are already in my book and on my laptop right now.

Shattering The 450-Year Lie: The Truth About Plastic Degradation

Let us jump back to the very beginning about the rate of decay of plastic, which we did not really get into, but you mentioned it right in the very first minute. Can you go into it a little bit?

Imagine you were to go to the shop, the hardware store, and say, “I want a gutter made of plastic or a window frame, and I want you to guarantee it for 100 years.” There is no such product. It does not exist. Why? Because plastic degrades. You and I watch our cars degrade in front of us. We watch our gutters on our house, and the paint on our house, which is plastic, and the window frames of our house are made of PVC. We watch it all degrade in front of our very eyes. When Greenpeace or the World Wildlife Fund tells us it takes 450 years to degrade, we say, “That must be true,” even though our own eyes have told us the opposite.

To understand plastic degradation, you have to ask yourself, “What is plastic?” It’s a large molecule made of bonds of carbon. It’s like a long chain, the same as cellulose, which is what trees are made of, the same as DNA, which is what we are made of, the same as collagen, which is what keeps our skin elastic, the same as enzymes. All of these things are polymers, types of plastic. They are related, same chemistry, same degradation. They degrade in the same way. The World Wildlife Fund has it on their website that a plastic bag will take hundreds of years to degrade. Scientists did that experiment, they put bags outside, and they degraded in less than a year.

You have a claim made with zero evidence whatsoever, with a big Donate Now button next to it, of course. Plastics do not degrade. Give us all your money. Even if you write to them with the studies, they completely ignore them, and they keep that misinformation on their website and collect donations from it. Meanwhile, scientists have actually looked at bag degradation, and they just degrade at a similar speed to a paper bag does. This is the size of the whopper that we are being told by people who want donations and people who are against plastics for bad reasons.

I want to get into it. I put a paper bag outside in the yard, and a plastic bag, and there is rain, and there is moisture. Would not the paper bag absorb the moisture in a different way and degrade faster?

Yes. The paper will be more affected by water. If you put it in the ocean, the paper one will degrade faster than the plastic one. If you put it outside in your garden, it is about the same speed because the plastic is more affected by ultraviolet light than the paper is. There are a lot of different speeds depending on the condition. The main message is that if you have a piece of plastic, it degrades at a similar speed to a leaf, a thin piece of plastic degrades at a similar speed to a leaf from a tree, or a piece of paper.

What about the plastic toy that is not as thin as a paper bag?

The thicker it gets, the longer it takes. There are examples of, you know, those sequoia trees, those giant trees, they fall in the forest, and they sit there for hundreds of years, undegraded because they are so thick. That is true. Things that are thicker take longer to degrade, whether they are natural or whether they are plastic.

This is kind of a breakthrough because you are literally breaking through an enormous public awareness, so to speak, about plastics. It could be misawareness, it could be misconstrued, but it has been so powerful that what you are saying now is kind of a breakthrough.

Do not forget, like I said, what I am saying is the scientific consensus. Professors all around the world have joined me, and they’ve endorsed the book, and they’ve checked the findings. Everything I said is true. Every study that I quote, I copy and paste from the study. Copied and pasted the exact words of the author, no spin, with a link so you can go check it yourself. If you go to PlasticsResearchCouncil.com, that’s my nonprofit where we all work unpaid, and you can go there, and you can click 250 links and check everything I just said and see the endorsements. This is what science says, but we are being told the opposite as members of the public.

Let us slow this down and let people have an opportunity. It is PlasticsResearchCouncil.com. I am certainly going to go there, and I hope that many of the audience will go there too, because this is very important to know. We already have so many things to worry about.

That is my point. I was on a podcast, and the woman was a doctor. Her specialty was worry. She said that it is worse for your health to worry about stupid things that are not worth worrying about than it is than the things themselves in many cases. People are worried about stuff. Let’s worry about war, let’s worry about something where people are dying, let’s worry about real, proven things. The number of deaths from microplastics recorded is zero. Let us worry about things where the number is not zero.

You have already mentioned the clothing that we wear, especially much of the sports apparel that has a certain amount of plastic in it, and people say, “No, you sweat, and it’s absorbed through your skin.” Same thing?

Complete nonsense. One thing I want to say is I am not encouraging anyone to buy plastic. This is made of wool. I like wool, cashmere, alpaca, and silk. If you ask me, this is a ceramic mug because I like it and it feels good in my hand. I drink from a glass made of silica. Not for health reasons, but because it is what I want and I am successful enough that I can afford what I want. The tragedy here is that rich people are telling poor people not to use plastic, and that is all they can afford. That is the problem.

We should not have governments or rich people taking away the greenest, cheapest solution that poor people have. That is the travesty here. People should be totally free to choose whatever they want based on things that are actually true. I choose in many cases not to use plastic because I just do not want to. I like something else more. I am not here to sell you plastic. If you are offered a straw, just say, “No thanks, I don’t need a straw.” The answer is obvious to anyone. That is my message.

Banning The Greenest Solution: Why Plastic Bag & Straw Bans Increase Environmental Harm

The straw, that was a whole big issue in the state of California, which usually runs a couple of steps ahead on all of this. I do not know what the status is now, but I know for at least a while, straws were disallowed. Now they are allowed again, I’m not even sure. Once again, it’s not even an issue.

The greenest straw is no straw. The second greenest is the plastic straw. That is what life cycle analysis shows, and then reuse it. People talk about these things as single-use, but that is our choice if we want to throw them away after one use. My daughter reused a plastic straw 50 times, and another guy called Abilio Matos on LinkedIn, who’s an environmental guy, reused a plastic straw a hundred times, no problem.

No one is holding a gun to our heads and telling us to throw it away after one use. It is the same with the plastic bag. That was invented by a Swedish guy. He has the patent, and his goal with the plastic bag was to save trees. He has saved millions and millions and millions of trees every year because the plastic bag saves us from chopping down all those trees for no reason.

In the meantime, I do not know the status because it changes all the time, but I believe in California, you cannot even get plastic bags anymore in the supermarket.

That is the funny thing. There are 30 studies on bags. Every life cycle study ever done says the plastic bag has the lowest impact, every study, Australia, New Zealand, America, Canada, France, wherever you want. You can find them in two seconds on Google. Just type in an LCA bag, and you’ll find these studies. What do the politicians do? They ban and tax the lowest-impact solution. That is stupidity, that’s corruption in some cases. Here is the even funnier part.

After their ban, they thought, “I’m going to do a study that shows what a smart politician I am.” The politicians in New Jersey and Maine in the US both commissioned a study to see how great their decision was. Both of these studies, after the ban, came back and said it was vastly worse for the environment to ban the plastic bag, much more CO2, much more harm, and more cost. Here is the funny part. They sold far more plastic after the ban. Here is why. It’s because grocery bags are super thin.

My ones, you can see through them. It’s so thin, it’s five grams. The paper bag weighs 50 grams, 10 times more. It is five grams of plastic, you can see through it, and you reuse it in your bathroom as a trash can liner. When you ban that bag, and you cannot use it anymore, now I have to go and buy trash can liners, which are five times thicker. If the plastics industry were smart, it would be encouraging plastic bag bans so that it could sell more plastic.

It would almost be entertainment to hear about this and the anecdotes that are funny. You did go in a very stark direction when you said very rich people who can afford to use whatever they want, glass, ceramics, wood, are telling millions of people, if not billions, who may not be able to afford glass, wood, and they can afford plastic, not to use plastic. They are even banning it, disallowing it, and taxing it. That actually, once again, takes the weight from the wealthy people who can afford anything anyway.

Some of these people are in poor countries where they do not even have good education or access to the facts, so they are even more unable to defend against this misinformation campaign. It is a sad thing to see.

That is very serious. I am going to assume again, I did not read the 6,000 studies, and I won’t because I am not a patient man like you are, but I will certainly go to the website. I am taking so far whatever you say is fact. You read the studies, you are telling me those things, and so it definitely makes me frustrated that these solutions that apparently are not harmful and are much more economical are being denied, and taxed, in fact, raise the burden on the majority of humanity.

Exactly, that is the problem. I do not mind what people take. If you do a personality test on me, people will ask me, “Why are you doing this? Are you doing it for the plastics industry?” I am doing it because I cannot stand lies. I do not want my daughters to be told lies at school. That is not the way to a better future. We have to make sensible decisions based on things that are true. That is my scientist side talking. That is the only way to make progress. You cannot make progress based on fiction. Maybe politicians can because they live in a world of fiction, but normal people certainly are suffering from the consequences.

The Spoonful & Credit Card Lies: The Illusory Truth Effect Of Anti-Plastic Propaganda

I do not need to ask you why you do that, and I certainly do not need to think that you are being paid by this or that industry. Being a scientist, if you have uncovered a mistake or a misconception, and it is easily provable by studies, you would have the natural urge to put it forth. I am not asking why you are doing this.

Let me give you one extreme example. There is a study that came out and said we have a spoonful of microplastics in our brains. This study went all around the world, it got in every newspaper, and no one checked it. I was the first to debunk that study before it was even officially released. I saw a preprint copy of it before it was finally released. They used a method that cannot detect plastic in the body. It detects fat and reports it as polyethylene. Other scientists have literally said, “Do not use this method. It’s broken. It does not work for detecting polyethylene in the body. It cannot be used.”

That is the method that they used. You would have to have a spoonful of microplastic in your brain to think that that was the truth. It is just ridiculous. If over 70 years old, you eat 0.01 grams of plastic, and the safe limit is a coffee cup every day, you could eat that much microplastic every day with no effect. The total 70-year consumption is 0.01 grams.

If that is your total consumption, how can you possibly have six grams in your brain? It is impossible. I have got one chair in a room that cannot multiply into a thousand chairs. It is impossible. You cannot have more in your brain than you were ever exposed to in your life. Yet this study went round and round, and it is not just me. Other scientists all around the world said, “This is complete nonsense.” Yet, of course, it’s exciting, so it’s selling newspapers.

That is the thing that I talk to reporters and people who write for all kinds of outlets and media, and everybody knows that negative news or scary news gets many more clicks than boring news or good news, even.

That is why I am fighting a losing battle here. They did a study that said if you lost $10, you would feel so sad that I would have to give you $20 to get you back to zero again. Negative news is twice as strong as positive news, which is why nobody wants to cover good news.

At least if not more. I also read that you use plastic. The spoonful, and I read another one, which I am sure you have seen, the credit card, that from the World Wildlife Fund. We are consuming a credit card’s worth of plastic every week.

They claim every week. Science says that the study is complete nonsense, and it would take 10,000 years to eat that much plastic. It is still on their website, still next to a Donate Now button, even though everyone knows it is not true. Complete nonsense.

To go a little bit wider and look at it from 30,000 feet, how many other facts are being thrown out there unchecked, and a whole industry revolves around them, or a whole political party, or a whole movement? You just seem to be able to throw news. I am seeing it in politics recently. People just say things. If you repeat it enough times, those are the facts.

That is called the illusory truth effect. That is where you just repeat nonsense enough times, and even high-IQ people will believe you if you just repeat a lie. That is exactly how they do it. Unfortunately, everyone believes the lies about plastic. Even if you come and show someone the truth, it is too much work for them to rethink it and reprogram their brain.

If I try to make the connections, I will also say that there is another issue here, not just making up a fact and throwing it out there, and then making it repeat and become viral, and going on. You began our conversation by telling me that you read 6,000 studies, and I already told you that, even though I was brought up on physics and engineering.

I do not have the patience to read not only 6,000 studies, but probably not even 60, and I could be one of the patient ones. Nowadays, the attention span is so short that many people, especially the younger people who grew up with the phone in their hand, literally, the new norm is what they call Reels. You look at the ten-second dream. How many people are going to debunk anything you say? How many people are going to read six studies? Not very many.

I get that all the time. People are saying, “This and that and the other.” I said, “If you care, please read the science. It’s there for free.” It’s there for free. The thing is, most people do not care. Most people are what is called virtue signaling. People want to look good and feel good. Instead of doing the things that would actually help the environment. Do you know what actually helps the environment? Flying less, driving less, and eating less meat. Those are three of the main things you can do. The problem with all of those three things. It has a thousand times more impact than plastic.

The problem with those things is nobody wants to do them because flying less means one less holiday, driving less means maybe finding another job or not going on a fun trip somewhere, and eating less meat means I am not having my favorite food. What people do instead of doing the things that would be really virtuous, that would really help, they go around waving a cotton bag over their head, saying, “Look at me, I’m a saint.” That’s the problem. Most people actually do not care. They only care about looking good. They do not care about doing good.

Actually, you started out by talking about very wealthy people, billionaires, and when you talk about the regular person flying less, you just said it means one less vacation. When you talk about a billionaire flying less, it means not getting around to visit Johnny and have lunch with Mary, and flying everywhere.

That is the funny thing. All these billionaires go to Davos every year, and they fly in their private jets to talk about saving the environment, and they are presented with all of the lies that you and I just debunked today. That’s why Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates, I do not think they are necessarily bad people. They believe all this stuff. They have been told these lies at Davos, and they believe it, and then they go out and spend their millions and millions to fight against the greenest, cheapest solution we have.

Which brings me to the thought of, would you be invited to speak at Davos or will it be like, “No way, we’re not gonna break this beautiful myth,” because on the surface, here is a serious scientist, he has all the studies, he can show it to you, he has a website, let us invite him to speak about real stuff. My suspicion is that they are not going to invite you.

I have asked to be invited. I am trying to get invited, but it would destroy their whole business. I have met some influential people, though. I met, for example, the Minister for the Environment of Mexico, Alicia Ibarra, and she is a scientist. She cares about global warming. She is 80 years old, and she is genuine. She spent her whole career. I showed her in her office in the government building in Mexico. I showed her all the science, and she said, “I see plastic is the least of our worries.”

Not that it is nothing, but it is the least of the worries because it is less than 1%. Now, when these environmental groups, these fake environmental groups, ask to meet her, she says, “No, I will only meet you if you bring me the science. I need to see science. None of your claims, none of your strange stories. You show me the life cycle studies, you show me the data, and then I’ll meet with you.” Of course, they do not have anything.

Exposing Corrupt Science: Why Billionaire-Funded Studies Use A Million Times Too Much Plastic

Is there data? Are there studies? When you run a scientific study, you could bias it in many ways. I am not saying you could totally change reality, but you can bias it. Are there studies actually out there that somebody can come and say, “Here are my studies, maybe they’re not 6,000, but they are 50”? Can they be biased enough? A study can be done in many ways.

There definitely are studies like that. That is why I read so much. Most people read no studies. The next level of person will go and find one study that supports what they want to believe. A real scientist goes and reads every single study they can find and then says, “What does it mean?” That is why I read 30 life cycle studies on bags, not 1, not 2, not 10, 30. That is every one ever made. Not just me, read it, I sent it to an independent expert who worked unpaid. He is a life cycle analysis expert.

He said, “Yes, every study ever done says the polyethylene bag has the lowest impact. What are we doing? Banning and taxing it.” When it comes to microplastics, though, that is some of the worst science I have ever seen. Not all of it, but there is a huge amount of corruption. It’s a strong word, but it’s not too strong. Some people are claiming harm. I just mentioned that most of the studies show no harm, but there are studies showing harm. Here is how they do the study. They use a million times more plastic than is actually in the environment and say, “Look, the fish aren’t happy.”

That is science so bad that that person should be put in a rocket and flown into the sun, in my opinion. I know that’s extreme, but that is how appalled I am at the ineptitude, the corruption of that science. Somebody who is so desperate for funding and fame that they will take a million times too much of something. Here is why that is important. If you take a million times too much salt, you die. If you take a million times too much of any medication, you will die.

If you even take, as we mentioned earlier, you take table salt from your table, you take five teaspoons of that, you can die. Oxygen, even, is healthy at twenty percent. If you take five times more than that, you die. The idea that they are taking a million times too much plastic compared to what they know is in the environment and then saying, “Look, I found an effect,” that is incompetent, corrupt science that should never have been published. It really makes my blood boil.

That is very insidious because in the context of what we’re talking about here, when the minister in Mexico says, “Bring me the science,” they can say, “Here’s a study.” Now, maybe she will be able to tell, oh man, that’s a very flawed study. Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe it’s just going to be the highlight, the summary, or the abstract. The mere existence of those studies goes a long way towards hampering what you’re trying to bring out.

There have been a couple of recent studies showing incredible harm from plastics. When you read the study, it was funded by the Gates Foundation or the Bloomberg philanthropies. It has no evidence in it. It is just a bunch of wacko calculations like they claim that this happened, and when you look, there is not a single recorded incident of the thing that they are claiming is happening. It is bizarre.

The plastic discussion that we have here is a very sad microcosm of the entire existence now on the planet, with once again, nobody having any patience. People just want to get the headlines quickly. It is easy to make a very flawed study. What are you going to say later? “They use that.” “You’re boring. You’re boring us with your details. Here’s a study. Come on.” No, but they use it a million times. “No, it’s so boring, leave us alone already.” People are living off highlights. We are talking about plastics, but how many other subjects are there where the same exact thing is going on?

I am a fool. The way to get rich is to tell lies for money. I am telling the truth for free. That is the worst thing you can ever do. The truth is boring, and doing it for free is really stupid.

This is very alarming, really. Again, it is very cute when people are getting excited for a cause. When you put a hundred-billion fortune behind it, and a 50-billion, this foundation, that foundation with tens of billions of dollars, then it becomes a driver that’s very hard to stop.

It is impossible. People ask me, “How will you win?” and I said, “I won’t win, but at least I will feel like I did my duty to try to show that you will not win.”

The Final Takeaway: Go For The Cheapest, Lightest Material To Save The Planet

Given the state of the world, and the younger generations are coming up with ever lower attention spans, ADD, and ADHD, nobody has any patience for boring details. Given the current administration, have you tried to be in touch with Kennedy Health, and will they be receptive to that?

I have presented to the Republican attorneys general, and they loved my presentation. They really changed their minds after seeing the science. I am going to meet another group of political people in a week or so and show them the science. I do not know if it will help or not. Who knows. I wanted to tell you something because your show is about money and the environment and having a better life, so I wanted to make a nice tie-in between money and this topic we’re talking about. If you look at what causes a lot of impact and what is expensive, it is usually the same thing.

To make one kilogram of gold, you need to create 22,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide, a global warming gas. What else do we know about gold? It is incredibly expensive because it takes so much energy to make. It is the same reason it is expensive, and that it is bad for the environment. If you look at the other end of that spectrum, the things with the lowest impact are polyethylene, poly-PET, paper, materials that take maybe two kilograms of CO2 to make one kilogram of material. They are also incredibly cheap. This is the takeaway for your readers.

Go for the cheapest solution, it is usually the one with the lowest impact, which is wonderful for poor people. It is wonderful for you and me. You can save money and do it with a clear conscience, knowing that most of the time you will be doing the right thing, whether that is paper or plastic. Going for metal or glass. One of those little cups that you have with your coffee, those insulated ones made of steel. Wonderful things, but they are terrible for the environment. Go for that if you want to and you have got the money, but do not do it because somebody told you a lie.

By the way, my show is not about money at all. My business, which I shifted from the Silicon Valley way that I was into investing in rental homes nationwide, so I do talk about wealth on another show. This show is purely about what we can do tomorrow to make our lives healthier and better. This is only about wellness and health and does not have anything to do with money.

Buy the cheapest product, the lightest one. If you are in the store and you do not have a life cycle study, buy the one that uses the least material. Zero straw has no weight. That is the lowest impact. There is no material. A plastic straw is less than one gram, paper straws are two grams, metal ones are 20 grams, glass ones are 30 grams, and that is the same order as the impact, which is how much weight you need to use to do the same job.

Chris, I certainly learned a whole lot. When I was introduced to you because I was going to have you on the show, at first, I myself, like everybody else who is busy, just skimmed the surface, and I said, “He’s going to tell me how to clear out the microplastics in my body, that’s so exciting.” I read a little more. I learned a lot today in a way that I wasn’t really expecting. I hope our audience does too, but let us repeat your website again.

It is PlasticsResearchCouncil.com.

I would certainly go there. I hope our audience and viewers go there. Chris, I want to really thank you for an enlightening presentation. I certainly learned so much.

Thank you, Adiel. Not many people can suffer the cognitive dissonance of learning something new. It is much more comfortable to stay with the lies that we believe now than to consider new evidence. I really have a lot of respect for the people who are able to listen to new evidence and reconsider.

Thank you so much. I hope to see you soon.

Thank you. You too.

Bye.

Important Links

• Dr. Chris DeArmitt
• The Plastics Paradox
• Shattering the Plastics Illusion
• Plastics Research Council

About Dr. Chris DeArmitt

Dr. Chris DeArmitt is a leading authority on plastics, microplastics and the environment. An internationally recognized scientist, author, and thought leader in materials science, known for his relentless commitment to uncovering and communicating the truth about plastics, microplastics and their environmental impact. With a career spanning decades and grounded in rigorous, peer-reviewed research, Dr. DeArmitt stands at the forefront of dispelling myths and correcting misinformation pervasive in today’s environmental discourse.

Author of influential books such as “The Plastics Paradox” and “Shattering the Plastics Illusion,” Dr. DeArmitt combines scientific depth with engaging clarity, revealing through meticulous analysis how conventional narratives about plastics and their ecological footprint often diverge dramatically from reality. His work is driven by a passion for scientific integrity, using evidence-based reasoning to challenge widely held beliefs and inform sustainable policies.

As the founder of the Plastics Research Council, Dr. DeArmitt has created an essential resource dedicated to educating policymakers, industries, and the public about scientifically validated environmental facts. He has reviewed over 5,000 scientific studies, becoming a leading authority whose insights influence both academic circles and global industries. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Fellow of the Institute for Materials, Minerals and Minding, A Member of the National Association of Environmental Professionals and a Chartered Chemist.

Beyond academia and research, Dr. DeArmitt is a sought-after keynote speaker, adept at translating complex scientific concepts into compelling narratives that resonate with diverse audiences worldwide. His engaging presentations not only illuminate critical environmental truths but inspire thoughtful dialogue, driving meaningful change in how society perceives and interacts with plastics.

Dedicated to a future where environmental decisions are rooted in factual accuracy rather than misconceptions, Dr. DeArmitt continues to be an influential voice advocating for evidence-based environmental stewardship. Media appearances on CBS 60 Minutes, BBC, Sky News, Rebel News France 24, The Telegraph, Washington Post and many more.