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www.newsindiatimes.com – that’s all you need to know Health News India Times (March 8, 2025 - March 14, 2025) March 14, 2025 13 How To Eat And Drink Fewer Microplastics DRINK TAP WATER Drinking bottled water could be intro- ducing you to thousands of microscopic pieces of plastic. In fact, bottled water is the biggest pathway to microplastic expo- sure, Mason said. Researchers have found that an aver- age liter of bottled water contains about 240,000 plastic particles, most of which are nanoplastics, measuring just a fraction of the width of a human hair. Switching from bottled water to filtered tap water has the potential to reduce microplastic intake. Microplastics can also be found in tap water, but in smaller amounts. Boiling and filtering water can help remove up to 90 percent of plastic par- ticles in drinking water, but experts warn it could also increase the leaching of toxic chemicals into the water. “Most people in the United States don’t need to drink bottled water. Tap water is safer and more regulated,” Mason said. AVOID PLASTIC FOOD CONTAINERS Using plastic is often unavoidable, but there are many ways to reduce your food’s interaction with plastics, and that includes the plastic storage containers, said Jane Muncke, managing director and chief scientific officer at the Food Packag- ing Forum, a research organization. Experts urge people to replace food that comes in plastic containers with alterna- tives. That could be as simple as buying peanut butter in a glass container. “Anything that’s packaged in plastic - there are microplastics that are shedding off of those materials,” Mason said. Canned food and beverage cartons are another plastic contamination pathway for humans. Cans are often lined with plastics that can shed microplastics and leach harmful chemicals. USE GLASS IN THE MICROWAVE One study found that microwaving food in plastic containers and reusable food pouches could release more than 4 million microplastic and 2 billion nano- plastic particles per square centimeter in just three minutes. Heat causes microplastics to migrate, Muncke said, so avoid putting hot food into plastic packaging and make sure that it’s not stored in sunlight or other warm environments. Other factors that could increase leaching are acidic products, like orange juice and other fruit juices, and fatty foods, she said. AVOID HIGHLY PROCESSED FOODS Highly processed foods contain signifi- cantly more microplastics than minimally processed food. One study found micro- plastics in all 16 protein products that researchers sampled. Of the products tested, breaded shrimp had the highest concentrations of plastic particles. Highly processed chicken nuggets contained 30 times as many microplastics per gram as chicken breasts. “As a rule of thumb, the more pro- cessed or ultraprocessed the food is, the more micro-nanoplastics will be issued,” Muncke said. Microplastics could also be hiding in your spice cabinet. One 2023 study found large quantities of plastic in salt. The study analyzed seven salts including table salt, sea salt and Himalayan pink salt. Each salt had some measurable amount of micro- plastics, but coarse Himalayan pink salt and black salt had the highest concentra- tion of microplastic fragments. Iodized salt had the lowest. DITCH THE PLASTIC TEA BAGS Nylon tea bags, which are made out of plastic, can release more than 11 billion microplastic and 3 billion nanoplastic particles in a single bag. Brewing loose-leaf tea is one way to avoid the problems associated with plastic tea bags. And tea bags made from cellulose, a biodegradable material, are far safer than plastic and have the added benefit of helping the tea absorb other harmful materials like heavy metals. -TheWashington Post - Continued From Page 12 Ask A Doc: The Concern Over GMOs Isn’t About What You May Think Q : Should I worry about GMOs? Are they bad for my health? A: GMOs, or genetically-modified organisms, have been swept into the larger conversation about chemicals, antibiotics and additives in our food supply. But there’s nothing inherently unsafe about genetically modified crops. What should give you pause, instead, is the potential risk of herbicide expo- sure – which can be an indirect result of modern GMO farming. The most commonly grown GMO crops in the United States are soy and corn that are resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, which the International Agency for Research on Cancer has labeled a probable human carcinogen. Several studies have shown that consuming GMOs is not associated with elevated health risks, including cancer. But glyphosate use has risen dramatically in the United States since the 1990s, and we lack long-term epidemiological data about what this may – or may not – mean for our health. There is also some emerging data re- garding glyphosate exposure, especially among younger children, worth considering. As we take into account what we do know, here’s my advice: GMOs are likely fine for adults to consume, especially if you minimize ultra-processed foods, which are generally linked to adverse health outcomes and are a common source of GMO corn and soy. For pregnant women and young children, it would be very reasonable to minimize consuming GMOs and ultra-processed foods whenever possible. WHAT ARE GMOS? A GMO is an organism, such as a crop, whose genes have been selected for a superior trait. A GMO is not a modern concept. Farmers have been selectively breeding plants chosen for desired traits for thousands of years. The entire field of Mendelian genetics was born from experiments crossbreeding peas to learn about gene inheritance. For instance, have you ever found it odd that an egg- plant, that large deep-purple blob, was named for an egg? It was selectively bred this way. The common eggplants of centuries ago were actually more like small white ovals. Of course, our modern techniques are very different: GMOs may undergo an accelerated process of gene engi- neering in a laboratory to insert a new gene from another organism into the DNA. Today, the most common traits that have been widely selected in GMOs are tolerance to herbicides and insect resistance. With these GMOs, rather than having to rely heavily on mechanical weeding, farmers have used increasingly larger amounts of herbicides that don’t harm their crops. As a result, measurable quantities of herbicides like glyphosate have been detected in GMO grains intended for our food, animal feeds and in some areas’ drinking water. WHAT ARE THE HEALTH RISKS WITH GMOS? Human studies that have linked glyphosate to cancers like Hodgkin’s lymphoma predominantly evaluated farm- ers with high levels of occupational exposure, not people exposed via GMO consumption in daily life. The National Academies of Medicine reviewed over 900 studies in 2016 on GMOs and did not find any evi- dence of elevated health risks, including cancer. But to be clear, that report (which is now almost 10 years old) acknowledged that we lack long-term epidemiological data about the indirect exposure to herbicides possibly associated with GMOs. Reassuringly, in 2021, the USDA conducted a study of over 10,000 randomly sampled foods across the country and found that more than 99 percent contained pesticide levels well below the safety thresholds set by the Environ- mental Protection Agency. WHY ARE CHILDREN MORE AT RISK? The evidence gets more complex for children, who are more developmentally vulnerable to toxins and stress. A large retrospective study published this January in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) looked at U.S. rural birth records between 1990 and 2013. Researchers from the University of Oregon found that babies with higher glyphosate exposure, particularly in the rural South and Midwest, were more likely to be born with lower birth weights – a change that they found oc- curred around the rollout of GMOs after accounting for confounders like use of other pesticides, local income, employment rates and demographics. The prospective studies are small and limited, but the findings still warrant pause: A 2021 study of 250 pregnant women in Puerto Rico – the largest study of its kind – found that prenatal exposure to glyphosate (measured objectively in urine samples) was associated with a 35 percent increased odds of preterm birth. WHAT CROPS ARE ALLOWED TO BE GMO? GMOs are not as ubiquitous as many think. There are only 11 approved GMO crops grown in the United States, including apples, potatoes and papaya. The list does not include crops like tomatoes, wheat and strawberries, for example. You can check out the full list here. Rarely, and under tight regulations, a new GMO enters the market: Last year for the first time a genetically engineered banana was approved in Australia and New Zealand to combat fungal disease. HOW DO I KNOW IF A FOOD HAS GMOS? To easily identify whether foods are GMOs, look for a non-GMO or organic label. Organic foods are defined, according to the USDA, by avoidance of synthetic pesti- cides, fertilizers, antibiotics and other farming practices like genetic modification. It bears noting that for the most part in the United States, there are no inherent nutritional differences be- tween GMOs and their organic counterparts. Most people cannot distinguish GMOs in taste, and there have been a paucity of studies that have ever demonstrated a mean- ingful personal health benefit of organic foods among adults. WHAT I WANT MY PATIENTS TO KNOW The 2021 study from the USDA washed much of its fresh produce as part of stan- dard procedures before testing. If you wash any fresh GMO produce before consumption, which many people do anyway, you’ll minimize (though per- haps not entirely eliminate), the risk of exposure to pesticides. Trisha Pasricha is an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. -Special to TheWashington Post By Trisha Pasricha, MD, MPH Photo:TheWashington Post