Science broadcaster and author Ziya Tong sits down with Andrew Mueller to discuss her new documentary film, ‘Plastic People: The Hidden Crisis of Microplastics’, her stint as one of Canada’s top encyclopaedia salespeople and the struggle to communicate important science issues to the public. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We know that there are toxic chemicals.
There's about 16,000 chemicals in plastic, about 4,200 of them we know are hazardous.
So we know that they're hazardous.
We know that people who work in plastics factories get cancer.
That's not very contentious.
But the question now is when you have microplastics in your body, what does that cause?
What kind of disease does that cause?
And we're at the early stages, but I can tell you it sure doesn't look good.
I have not come across studies that are like, hey, this is looking great.
Welcome to the big interview on Monocle Radio.
This week's guest is Xia Tong, the award winning science reporter and broadcaster best known for anchoring Daily Planet on Discovery Channel Canada and more recently is the author of the Reality Blind Spots, Hidden Truths and the Dangerous Illusions that Shape Our World.
With a decades long career communicating weird, wonderful and worrying scientific discoveries, Zaya's latest investigation leans heavily on that worrying end of the spectrum.
Made in collaboration with award winning director Ben Adelman, Plastic the Hidden Crisis of Microplastics sees Zaya investigating this invisible threat alongside leading scientists and asks what might be done about it.
I'm Andrew Muller and I spoke to Xia Tong on the Big Interview.
Xia Tong, welcome to the Big Interview.
It's great to be back.
Well, let's start with the film Plastic People.
And let's start specifically with the title Plastic People because as I understood it, your contention is that basically we are all now plastic people, at least in part.
Yeah, basically we're calling this Barbie the Horror Movie.
So, yeah, we have a lot of plastic in us and scientists are starting to discover it in all different parts of the human body.