All About Change - Emily Penn - Microplastics, Ocean Pollution, And Female Health

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

Always having a love for the sea, Emily Penn took a journey from Shanghai to Melbourne, Australia that would change her life, as she saw first-hand the extent of pollution in the world’s oceans. Since then, she has organized the largest ever community-led waste cleanup operation, completed a trip around the world solely using biofuel, and created various avenues for people—from ordinary citizens to filmmakers—to discover and document the damage microplastics have done to our oceans. Emily also runs eXXpedition, a series of sailing voyages where crew members—all women—focus on researching the connection between pollution and female health.  Emily joins Jay to share her insights into ocean advocacy, what lessons we can learn from the past, and how governments, companies, and communities can reimagine the way we create and consume products.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So one morning we were in the middle of the Pacific. At that point, we were 800 miles from the nearest point of land. The closest people to us were in the space station, in orbit, above our heads. Hi, I'm Jay Rudiman, and welcome to All About Change, a podcast showcasing individuals who leverage the hardships that have been thrown at them to better other people's lives. This is all wrong. I say put mental health first because if you don't... This generation of Americans has already had enough.

I stand before you not as an expert, but as a concerned citizen. Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can! This week, we are visited by Emily Pent, an ocean advocate and founder of XXpedition, a series of ocean voyages with an all-female crew focusing on plastics, chemicals, and their effects on female health. We can also pass these chemicals on through the placenta and then also through breastfeeding. That's when I thought,

wow, this is quite a female-centered issue. Emily's work was inspired by a journey she took from Shanghai to Melbourne, Australia, a trip she made by land and sea. And when I came up to the surface of the water, I saw a toothbrush just floating just under the surface, and a cigarette lighter, and a bottle top. We've all heard about or seen trash in the ocean. It gathers in large amounts, sometimes covering miles. But equally troubling, and far less clear of the naked eye, is chemical pollution. And as Emily would discover, she was just scratching the surface of another serious problem. We worked with the United Nations

and we chose 35 chemicals that they had banned because of their toxicity. And we found 29 of those chemicals in my blood. Okay, so Emily, thank you for being my guest on All About Change. I am looking forward to this conversation.

I find that the work that you've done to be fascinating and extremely important, also a little bit scary. I understand you're from Swansea in Wales, and people say that you feel more at home in the water than on land. How did your love for the ocean begin? I did spend a lot of time on the sea as a little girl. I learned to sail one holiday, but literally in a kind of bathtub-sized sailing boat. And then I just loved it. And I'd go out in the wind, the rain, the tides on the

muddy Bristol Channel. Not a very glamorous place to learn to sail. But, you know, there was just something about being out there that I found kind of freeing, you know, and just love that sort of being right in the elements. And I think that's probably where it began. Tell us the story about how you decided to take a boat to Melbourne instead of jumping on an airplane to get there. Absolutely. So I had just finished my architecture degree and very much wanted to be an architect. I love the degree. I love the challenge of having a brief and having to solve a problem and create something. And I lined up this job in Melbourne. But the previous year, I'd actually had an opportunity to write my dissertation on an eco-city that was being built in Shanghai.

And because I was studying this zero-carbon city, I wanted to get there in a zero-carbon way without taking an airplane. And I had the most incredible journey by land that time across Europe, Russia, Mongolia, and down through China to reach this city. And it was that journey where I just fell in love with this idea of traveling slowly around our planet and getting to experience all the subtle transitions, the change in culture and climate and landscape, and really the people who I met along the way. So the following year, when I had this job lined up in Melbourne, I wanted to kind of see it all on the way and of course, reduce my carbon footprint as much as I

could. And so I ended up looking for a way to hitchhike this time by boat and connecting back to my love for the ocean. And got a place on board, a boat that was heading to Australia. This is arguably the most efficient, environmentally friendly, not to mention sexy and futuristic powerboat ever imagined. So tell us about this boat. I've seen pictures of it. It looks very strange. And I have so many questions about it, like what was it like to travel in this boat. I've seen pictures of it. It looks very strange. And I have so many questions about it. Like, what was it like to travel in this boat? What kind of fuel did it use? Was it scary to be out at sea on a smallish vessel? Yeah, well, take each one of those questions. There's so much

to talk about it. As you say, it looks completely crazy. It looks like it belongs in a James Bond film, or it looks like it's going to take you to outer space. You know, it's an amazing hull design that's actually a wave piercer. So rather than going over the top of the waves, it's designed to just go straight through the middle, which is what makes it more fuel efficient. I mean, it's very, very narrow. You can sort of touch both sides with your hands at the same time when you're in this little capsule. And it ran on biofuel. So fuel had come from all sorts of renewable sources, but also, most importantly, waste sources.

And so that's what we took on. And to your question about it being scary, definitely some of my scariest moments I think I've ever had were on board that boat. It was a prototype vessel. You know, no one would insure it. It was you sort of going out there, kind of putting your faith that the designers knew what they were doing. Tell us about your first encounter with plastics in the ocean. So it was on that boat and we didn't actually have any running water on board. We just had three liters per person per day for all our drinking, washing, cooking that we needed to do. So if we did want to have a proper wash, we had to just stop the boat and then jump over the side. And so most mornings, if it was calm enough, we

would do that. And so one morning we were in the middle of the Pacific, you know, it was gorgeous temperature. We're all kind of excited to get in the water. We stopped the boat and jumped in. And when I came up to the surface of the water, I saw a toothbrush just floating just under the surface and a cigarette lighter and a bottle top. And at that point, we were 800 miles from the nearest point of land. So you literally can't really get any further away anywhere on the planet from people. And in fact, the closest people to us were in the space station in orbit above our heads. That was the first moment. I don't want to say that's when it hit me because I think it still took weeks more of seeing plastic again and again and again.

As we crossed the Pacific, we stopped at small islands. Uninhabited ones that we found were shin deep with plastic as we came ashore. We stopped at inhabited ones that were having to burn all of this plastic. that we're having to burn all of this plastic. And so layer upon layer during that journey, more became revealed that by the time I got to Australia, I thought, I've got to do something about this because there's this issue there that no one's really talking about. It's not like there are these islands of plastic that you're encountering, right?

Exactly. And that's what we first thought, that we'd go out and find these islands. I mean, maybe even something that you could clear up. But the reality is when you do see a picture of a cluster of plastic, it's usually something that might be a localized event, like a monsoon that's just recently brought a lot of plastic into a bay or something like that. But when you're out in the middle of these gyres, which is what we call the accumulation zones, where due to the ocean currents, all the plastic, you know, leaving land eventually then ends up. And that's when I really started to learn more about what was going on and that it wasn't just the plastic that I was seeing with my eyes, but when we built a trawl

and dragged a fine mesh net across the surface of the ocean, we realized that actually that was full of hundreds of what we call microplastics. So pieces of plastic that are smaller than your little fingernail. And what did you find was most alarming about these microplastics? Really their size. They were hard to see and then much harder to clean up. So I think that's the first thing that struck me because when we were taking this net through the water, we'd bring up the microplastic, but we'd also bring up the plankton.

And, you know, basically the basis of our whole food chain that lives on the surface of the ocean as well. So that sort of struck me of if it's that big, how do we clean it up? Then I think the next layer that struck me of, if it's that big, how do we clean it up? Then I think the next layer that struck me was also realizing that it was sinking, gets coated in algae. It then takes its way down to the seabed, maybe miles deep, and then started realizing that it was getting into the food chain. We caught fish. We dissected their stomachs. We found plastic in the stomach of fish. and that I think is where it changed again for me and it was no longer then just about cleaning up our mess but also about

what impact is this having on animal life and also human life you started to do this research and think about how the plastics move up the food chain in terms of consuming animals. And we obviously as humans are at the top of the food chain. What did you find there? So I was obviously concerned about the plastic, but also a lot of the chemicals that are used in the production of plastic. So things like phthalates that make plastic flexible and flame retardants that stop it combusting and fluorinated compounds that make things like our waterproof jackets have that lovely repellent texture you know all of these chemicals that are very useful they have all these fantastic properties but we know that they are persistent chemicals and many of them have actually been banned by the United Nations because they are toxic to humans

and wildlife. And so it was these chemicals that I was particularly interested in because we know that they bioaccumulate in the food chain. So they're not toxic to something at the bottom of the food chain, but by the time they get to the top, like to the human, then they can become toxic or the whale or the eagle, you know, whatever it might be at the top. And so I decided to do a blood test to find out, well, are any of these chemicals that we're finding in the plastic and in the fish and in the water? I mean, are they getting into us? So did this blood test where we worked with the United Nations and we chose 35 chemicals that they had banned because of their toxicity. And we found 29 of those chemicals in my blood. So, you know, this is the part that's scary because probably most of us humans on the planet have plastics and toxins in our body.

What does that mean? Are we all doomed to have cancer at some point in our lives? It's a great question. And it's one that there's not a definite answer to. There's a lot of science going on at the moment. The fact that, you know, we do have these chemicals in us. So there's 29 chemicals I have inside me, I know that they're either carcinogens or they're endocrine disruptors, meaning that they're chemicals that disrupt our hormone system and stop those important chemical messages moving around our bodies. The levels that I have, you know, it's hard to know at what level does it become toxic or do you need a few different types of chemicals that work together

to become toxic? One of the challenges is there's just, there are so many different chemicals that we are exposed to in our lifetimes. We might have six or seven hundred toxic chemicals in our bodies at the moment if we were to test for them all. And so it's hard to know at what point does that then trigger cancer or trigger some kind of hormone disruption. And then it's also hard to know exactly the pathway that came into us because again, we're exposed to so many things over such a long period of time in our life. Right. In preparing for this discussion, I was just the number of products that I was picking up over the day that were contained in plastics. And what happens to those plastics and do we recycle them and is recycling enough?

And not every country recycles the same. So I guess what I'd like to ask you is, are we at the point of no return? I suppose I have optimism in my nature. And maybe that's what helps me get out of that every day and keep on trying to change things, you know, as I've been doing for the last 15 years and as I'm sure I'll continue to do for the rest of my career, my lifetime. You sort of ask the question of, you know, is it enough to recycle? And my answer would be absolutely not. At the moment, like you say, different countries have different rules. Even different counties and towns here in the UK have different rules over

what they recycle and what they don't. But also, I think the main point is that recycling at the moment is just this sort of afterthought, which is why only 9% of the plastic that we use globally is actually recycled. And we design our product for its primary use. And then we think, oh, what are we going to do with this now? And you have something that's got three different types of plastic all stuck together. And that means it's actually pretty much impossible to recycle because you've got to try and strip the whole thing apart before you can recycle it. And then if it's, you know, perfect quality of a certain type, then yes, it will get reused. But even then, it's often being used not to be turned back into what it was previously, say a bottle back into a bottle, which would be an example of kind of a closed loop circular economy.

It would probably get turned into a drain pipe or a carpet once that's got to its end of life it then ends up in landfill and so we really need to move into this way of living in circles the same way that nature does you know where we can actually close these loops anything that we do make and we put out into the world, we have to have a plan to recover it and take it back to a useful material that can be used for something again. Or we just have to avoid using materials completely. So I'm wondering if you could tell the story of DDT and how that might give us a glimmer of hope of how when action is taken, harmful chemicals can be done away with. Absolutely. I mean, DDT, I think, you know, most of us are aware it's a chemical

used to control malaria that was used widely in the middle of the 20th century. Anywhere and everywhere, people want to make outdoor life around home more comfortable. It's also good for use on swamps and pools of stagnant water, campsites and wherever else bugs like to breed and gather. And then in the 70s it became known that it was actually impacting the bald eagle and creating an inability to actually form and lay eggs. And that was due to this bioaccumulation of the DDT in the food chain. And so for that and other reasons, the chemical was banned. And it's by all means, you know, not perfect. There's still examples of DDT that kind of got dumped and is leaking in places around

the world, which is an ongoing issue. But on the whole, you know, there was a lot of action taken to try and remove the use of DDT. Now, interestingly, when we did our blood results for our team of women from all over the world and all different ages. We actually found that most of us didn't have any DDT in us, but we had a few older women who were alive in that sort of 50s, 60s age who did have the presence of DDT in their bodies. But the fact that us younger generation didn't was really quite reassuring that, you know, when you do actually create a policy and that action is taken, you know, we literally can see the results in our own blood. Right. Emily, I wanted to ask you about the work that you've done on the effects of microplastics on female health and what have

you found out there? Absolutely. Yeah, so not actually so much microplastics. Going back to what I mentioned earlier, it's actually the chemicals that we're looking at, these toxic chemicals, which we think could be carried into the body through microplastics, but they also probably enter our bodies through many other mechanisms as well, like the food and drink we eat, or even the pillow that you sleep on, you know, probably has some kind of flame retardant chemical in it that you're breathing in. When I discovered that I had 29 of these toxic chemicals in my blood, when I actually learned what they were, most of them are endocrine disruptors

that mimic our hormones. And when I started to understand, well, what impact might they have on me? I realized that actually the biggest impact they would probably have would be during pregnancy because that's when our hormones, of course, are essential with growing the fetus inside us. And any disruption to that could have really quite significant consequences. I then went on to learn that actually we can also pass these chemicals on through the placenta. It's almost our body's bizarre way of getting rid of them and then also through breastfeeding in the breast milk and that's when I thought, wow, this is quite a female-centered issue, which is why I set up my organization, X-Expedition, which was to work with

teams of women around the world to tackle the problem. So let's talk about X-Expedition and tell us what you do and what impact it has. So we have been sailing to all parts of the world with teams of women, 10 at a time, that leave their life, their job, just for a few weeks and come and join us on one of these voyages. This is how we tether ourselves down at nighttime so that we don't fall overboard. Please, please, please, please, please, please do not puke in the trash can because we have to carry that around for the next three weeks. And they are extraordinary women, but in a way they're also ordinary women. They are scientists, teachers, designers, storytellers, industry leaders. You know they they have a whole variety of jobs and they come out

and they join us and we do scientific research so we collect samples and that goes on to provide the data that i talked about earlier that we then supply to governments and industry to create change but along the way they also change they have the most extraordinary journey where for one, they sail across an ocean, which for most of them being non-sailors is quite an extraordinary achievement. And seeing that transition in someone from arriving on this boat, this 70 foot yacht, which sort of seems big in harbor, but when you get out into the middle of the ocean, you know, you feel like a little bath toy bobbing around out there. And seeing them, you know, a week in at the helm, steering this boat through waves is an incredible achievement. They're also doing the science. They are really, really getting their hands dirty. And when you

look closely, when you're forced to do that science, to count every piece of plastic that comes up in every single sample, to characterize it, to put it under the FTIR, to work out what polymer it is, it all starts to sink in. Just what the problem is, how vast the problem is, and how challenging it is to solve. And they take that experience back into their life. They can spread the word, they can incorporate into the job they do. We've had someone that works for a toy company, a plastics company. We've had someone who is a packaging designer, and they're taking back home everything that they've seen into their industry.

I feel that a lot of what propels us forward as humans is greed. What is the easiest way to produce something that we can make some money on? At the same time, there's no, I mean, I guess at some point governments or businesses can self-regulate and say, you know, we want to make money, but at the same time, we're destroying ourselves. So tell me how you get involved in each aspect. How do you get involved speaking to governments? How do you get involved speaking to companies or speaking to individuals to try to effectuate change? You know, one of the things about the ocean is that it's so far out of sight and out of mind. And if we can't see what's going on,

then it's very hard to actually feel like there's a problem and that your behavior needs to change. So raising awareness of these issues and trying to bring them into the forefront of people's minds has been a really important part of the last 15 years. But of course, however much consumer behavior and shifting we can get, it's never going to be the answer if we haven't got then businesses and governments really doing their piece. So with businesses, it's about helping them sink right back to the drawing board about how we redesign our products, redesign our systems, and do things differently, and actually giving them the confidence that consumers want it,

and that actually the only way that we're going to succeed and going to be able to get through this is if they change their systems and change their ways and really get them believing in that enough that they're able to commit to doing it. When it comes to governments, for them, I feel like it's really about providing them with the data that they're able to commit to doing it. When it comes to governments, for them, I feel like it's really about providing them with the data that they need. You know, so a lot of the work we do is going around the world, actually trying to record what's happening in the ocean and also in countries and on the shorelines and do these circularity assessments so that we can actually understand the flow of plastic into a community, out to a community, where the leakage points are, so that then policies can be created

that actually allow intervention to try and solve it. And also policies that help businesses make the right decisions and then allow them to survive as a business. Because of course, I'm sure many people want to do the right thing, but they aren't able to be competitive if they do the right thing. And government can help with policies to level the playing field. So Emily, when you're taking on and challenging governments and challenging businesses, do you ever feel threatened that you're out there as an activist saying, hey, you're doing things the wrong

way and you're sort of causing an issue even an issue that may help them in the long term does that ever enter into the situation for you as an activist to be honest not so much i'd say where i work is in more of a ground where someone sort of knows what the right thing is to do, but they just have no idea how to get there. And that's very much, it's this sort of 20-60-20 rule that I like to work with, where you sort of think, well, 20% of the population already know what's going on. They're doing the right thing. You don't need to worry about them. And then you've got another 20 percent who just probably will never get it however hard you try so actually at the moment let's park them but

there's this 60 percent in the middle who aren't thinking about it day to day or really putting it at the heart and center of what they're doing but that actually with a little bit of understanding, that knowledge that they need, the tools, the belief that they can do something, that's where really the opportunity is right now, because they're open to it. You just need to help find the way through. And I think it's just true of anything, really. So Emily, maybe you can just leave us with how listeners to this podcast can get involved. How can they help you in what your organization is trying to do? And I mean, we've talked a lot about what they can do in their lives, but maybe just a couple of tips of things that they could do immediately to try to improve our environment.

So we actually, during lockdown, built a platform called shift.how, which you can go to on your phone, online, and it showcases hundreds of different solutions. It's like a little signpost system to go and find other things that are going on. And it uses filters that takes this overwhelming hundreds of solutions and it filters them down to just a handful, depending on what it is that you're looking for, whether you're looking for something to do at home or in the supply chain at work or in your local government policy.

You know, it really helps you navigate because I think that's one of the things that I find more and more when I talk to people about this is people want to do something. There's a lot of people out there who genuinely care. They think it's terrible what's happening to our planet, but they just don't know where to start. And it's completely fair enough because one of the hardest messages I think that I have to deliver is that there's not a silver bullet solution. And I think a lot of people are hoping that they're going to, you know,

open their news app one morning and it's going to say, oh, problem solved. Someone's come up with the answer. Everyone, you've just got to do this one thing and it's all going to go away. And unfortunately, that day is never going to come. You're never going to open your news app and find that one solution. But then the good news is there are already hundreds of solutions. And so we all just need to start adopting as many of those small solutions as we can. And I really believe that the only way we're going to solve this problem is by a lot of people taking small actions actions because that's also how we've created it you know every toothbrush out there every bottle top out there it's a small action from one person

that's created that problem and so we need everyone to believe that they will make a difference I think it's very easy to think oh but everyone else is drinking from a plastic bottle What difference is it going to make if I drink from one more? But of course, you know, it's like voting. You know, you think my one vote is not going to change the outcome. And you're right. One vote won't. But if nobody voted, then you wouldn't have a vote at all. And so it's exactly the same with the plastic bag and the plastic bottle. And we need everyone to believe that their one action will add up to make a difference. Well, that is an optimistic note to end this discussion. Thank you so much, Emily, for being my guest on All About Change. I learned so much from you and a little bit of optimism to help save our planet.

So thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. It would be nice, wouldn't it, for someone to just wave a magic wand and make all of the trash and chemicals in our oceans just go away. But if we can understand anything from Emily's story, it's that these problems aren't a simple fix. And to her point, we've made meaningful change before with DDT. We can do it again, but it's going to take a massive effort.

And we all have a role to play. Consumers, companies, and governments too. Emily's experience teaches us, while we may not arrive at a crisis together, together is the only way forward. That's it for today's episode. Come back in two weeks as I sit down with sports journalist Katie Barnes to hear the struggles transgender athletes face just to compete in the sports they love. Today's episode was produced by Kim Wong, with story editing by Yochai Meital and Mijon Zulu. To check out more episodes or learn more about the show, you can visit our website, allaboutchangepodcast.com. or learn more about the show, you can visit our website, allaboutchangepodcast.com.

If you like our show, spread the word. Tell a friend or family member, or leave us a review on your favorite podcasting app. We would really appreciate it. All About Change is produced by the Ruderman Family Foundation. Special thanks to our production team at Pod People. David Zwick, Grace Pina, Morgan Foos, Brian Rivers, and Amy Machado. That's all for now. I'm Jay Ruderman, and we'll see you next time on All About Change.