Juno News - Plastics expert slams claim that plastic is “toxic”

00:00:00.000 One issue that we have been covering all week has been the United Nations ongoing efforts to

00:00:15.200 push a plastics treaty. We have the big confab in Ottawa this week, thousands of delegates from

00:00:20.460 around the world. We had the federal government on Monday announce the formation of a plastics

00:00:25.560 registry, which will be coming around 2025, I believe. And we've talked about some of the

00:00:31.180 details on that. But I think at its core, we have to really go back to first principles here,

00:00:36.140 because what the federal government has done is really designated plastic as a toxin. And once

00:00:41.920 you've done that, once you say plastic is toxic, you're actually able to justify a lot, which was

00:00:47.420 why the federal government was slapped down in the way that it was when it had that single-use plastics

00:00:52.700 ban. The Conservative Party of Canada now has decided to launch a campaign to bring back the

00:00:57.420 plastic straws, which you know, we don't have the photo handy, but that's an issue near and dear to

00:01:02.240 my heart, the plastic straw crusade by the government. But let's actually talk about the science here. We

00:01:07.300 have always been told we have to follow the science. What does the science say on plastics? I wanted to

00:01:13.500 bring into the show Dr. Chris D'Armond. He's the president of Phantom Plastics. Now, he actually is

00:01:18.900 an expert on this. He's not just a guy who is in the industry and represents a commercial interest.

00:01:24.840 He actually knows the science in and out on this and has spoken about it around the world. Chris,

00:01:29.480 it's good to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on the show today.

00:01:32.900 Yeah, thank you for having me on the show. I appreciate it.

00:01:36.040 So let's talk first and foremost about that idea of plastic being a toxin. What's the argument that

00:01:42.340 they advance to justify this? And why would you say they're getting it wrong? Or what are they missing?

00:01:46.820 Yeah, that's a great point. So you can't just make up things and say, this is that or that's the other.

00:01:51.960 I mean, there are scientific ways of telling what's toxic and what isn't toxic. So when that

00:01:55.780 accusation was made, I went and looked up the science. And that's the problem in general.

00:02:00.860 People say, you know, this person's for plastic, against plastic. We shouldn't be for or against

00:02:06.060 anything. We should be for finding what's true, right? And then once we found the evidence, once we

00:02:10.560 found what's true, then we move on from there and make sensible choices. And people have forgotten

00:02:14.480 that. They're so busy taking sides. No one's checking the facts. So I'm looking at a table

00:02:19.000 right here, which I've posted online, which is, you know, the EPA's definition of what's toxic and

00:02:23.680 what's less toxic. And if we look at plastics, we like polyethylene, polypropylene, PET, and so forth,

00:02:30.760 we find that they're the safest things. So there are four categories of toxicity. They're in the

00:02:35.220 safest category that there is. So they're as safe as things we have on our table. They're safer than

00:02:41.240 table salt, for example. And I'm looking at a list of, they're as safe as alcohol, which we drink

00:02:46.460 every day. That's the category that these plastics are in. They're literally so safe, you could eat

00:02:50.620 them every day and nothing would happen to you. So it's, whereas if you look at things like copper

00:02:54.760 metal, which drinking water pipes are made of, they're in the most toxic category. So there are

00:03:00.020 ways of telling what's toxic, what isn't toxic. There are literally numbers that define how much of this

00:03:04.640 you can ingest and have a problem or not have a problem. And plastics are simply non-toxic. So

00:03:08.900 for somebody to just make up in his bathtub one day, this is toxic and I decree it so. He's not

00:03:14.940 Julius Caesar, right? I mean, there are actual ways and scientists have been studying this for 50 years,

00:03:19.420 right? And it's all documented and available to the public. So it's beyond absurd that somebody

00:03:24.920 should make such a proclamation. Well, and I find that in this argument,

00:03:29.320 and certainly when you look at the policy response to it, they conflate two issues because you could say

00:03:33.760 plastic is non-toxic, but there is a pollution issue. And you could say, we don't like

00:03:37.820 plastic that's being dumped in the oceans and parts of the world. But you're right that when

00:03:41.880 they use the toxic label to justify policy, which is what the federal government in Canada did,

00:03:48.040 it just doesn't have a basis at all. So how do they argue that it is when the evidence is so clear

00:03:53.680 on this that it isn't? That's strange. I haven't looked into their argument, actually. I haven't.

00:03:57.200 So I'm a scientist. I don't think there's much there. They just made it up. I do know that I looked

00:04:01.300 to the same guy. And it's so funny that they call him right honorable because it appears to be

00:04:05.780 anything but honorable, as far as I can tell, because whenever I compare what he says to what

00:04:09.720 science says, they're the exact opposite. He tried to ban a flame retardant called DBDPE.

00:04:14.960 And I wrote a report. I was so outraged that I wrote a report and read all the science on that.

00:04:20.000 He proposed banning one of the safest flame retardants that prevents Canadians from dying in

00:04:24.120 their bed in flames based on zero evidence. He had not one piece of experimental evidence upon which

00:04:30.520 to declare this stuff is dangerous. And there is science on that substance. It's been thoroughly

00:04:35.500 tested for years and years and years and found to be completely safe. It's so safe that if you

00:04:39.420 eat it, like not a molecule of it dissolves because it's completely insoluble. So they say

00:04:44.500 that they're banning this flame retardant on the precautionary principle, which means better safe

00:04:48.720 than sorry. Whereas what they're actually doing is the opposite. It's better sorry than safe.

00:04:52.520 You're saying, OK, I'd rather that hundreds of Canadians potentially die in flames on the one hand

00:04:57.020 versus zero evidence of toxicity on the other. And that's what happens when you let ideology get

00:05:01.380 out of control and forget to check the data. Just as a complete non-scientist here, I'll ask you,

00:05:08.100 are all plastics, when it comes to the toxicity question, are all plastics created equally? Or is

00:05:12.900 there a distinction between, you know, the plastic that's in a plastic straw and the plastic that's in

00:05:17.360 an industrial PVC pipe? Yeah, well, in general, plastics are made of really big molecules. And so

00:05:22.540 the FDA has declared them basically safe. So plastics are assumed to be safe because they don't migrate

00:05:27.620 around. The molecules can't move. They can't go through your skin, for example. The molecules

00:05:31.620 can't go through your skin. They're so large. So they're considered, due to their very nature,

00:05:35.780 safer than almost all chemicals. Is there a plastic that's toxic? I don't know of one. I've looked at

00:05:41.300 all the major thermoplastics and I don't think I can think of a toxic plastic right now that's toxic.

00:05:47.620 And if another question that people ask is, OK, well, maybe the plastic's not toxic, but what about the

00:05:52.420 additives in them? And that table I just mentioned, I looked up the toxicity of the standard additives in the

00:05:57.540 these plastics like polyethylene, polypropylene. And don't forget, these are things FDA approved that

00:06:02.020 you can put them in your mouth and store food in them. So they've already been tested and found to

00:06:05.620 be safe. We know what migrates out of them, the additives, if they come out and how much. But these,

00:06:10.420 even the additives themselves, when you check their toxicity, they're the same as plastics.

00:06:13.860 They're so safe, you can eat teaspoons of them and nothing happens to you.

00:06:18.100 Might not be delicious though, but flavor is not the metric here. So let's take a look at what's

00:06:25.140 happening in Ottawa this week. We have the world leaders on this trying to convene to create a

00:06:30.660 plastic treaty. And you have the federal government in Canada saying we need a plastic registry. Companies

00:06:36.260 need to account for all that they're doing and creating. I know you've actually consulted with a lot of

00:06:40.820 these companies in the past. And as I've understood it, a lot of them are well aware of what they're

00:06:45.700 producing and where it's going. I mean, this is just a basic part of what they're doing from an industrial

00:06:50.580 perspective. And I don't see why the hand of government is what's needed here.

00:06:54.660 Yeah. So let me give some perspective on that. My job is to be a plastic scientist and I've done

00:06:59.940 it for decades, right? The thing that I'm discussing with you today is not what I get paid to do. I'm

00:07:04.100 not paid to be a plastic environmentalist. The reason I got into this is that my own daughters were

00:07:08.100 taught lies at school and that made me angry. So as a hobby, I read 4,000 scientific studies and I

00:07:13.380 found that nobody's checking the facts. The media aren't checking the facts apart from people like you,

00:07:17.380 who crusade for truth like I do. And the green groups are making hundreds of millions of dollars

00:07:22.100 from telling lies because every time you compare what they say to the facts, you find that they're the

00:07:26.580 exact opposite, as I mentioned. So have you ever heard that we eat a credit card of plastics a week,

00:07:31.620 for example? The latest scientific peer-reviewed study said it would take 20,000 years to eat a

00:07:36.660 credit card of plastic. But guess what? These green groups have got that up on their websites

00:07:40.900 right next to a big juicy donate now button, right? And if you want to understand something, follow the money.

00:07:45.940 So I'm not here to defend plastics. I'm not here to do anything other than take the evidence, which

00:07:50.900 was really tedious. I didn't have these reading glasses before I started reading these thousands

00:07:54.260 of studies. So I take the evidence and present it fairly. So if you look on my website or in my free

00:07:58.900 book, you'll see that everything that I quote is cited verbatim, where I literally copy and paste

00:08:03.060 from the study with zero spin and cite the study so you can click a link and go and check it yourself.

00:08:07.620 And that's where we should start. Let's not start with pro-plastic or against plastic. Let's start with

00:08:12.020 what's true and what isn't true. And to your point, probably the single most disappointing

00:08:18.100 thing for me is that this thing with plastics is a big distraction. If you look at what's actually

00:08:22.900 harming the environment, plastic is half a percent of the materials we use. So in our obsession to talk

00:08:28.660 about plastic all day and all night, which is half a percent of the materials we use, it's the greenest

00:08:34.180 option in 90% of cases, according to lifecycle studies. So we're obsessing over half a percent of all of

00:08:39.540 our materials. That's almost always the least harmful option and completely ignoring the 99% of

00:08:45.140 material, which is almost always the most harmful option. So the issue isn't that plastics have an

00:08:49.860 impact. They certainly do. And there is litter, but it's not just plastic that's litter and it litter

00:08:54.660 isn't caused by materials either. It's caused by people. So pretty much everything is off track here.

00:08:59.540 We're not making any impact and we're in fact doomed to failure if we keep obsessing over plastic and not

00:09:04.660 talking about the 99% of problematic materials. Well, and also a lot of these objectives from

00:09:10.340 the green industry tend to butt up against each other. I was skimming through your book,

00:09:15.300 The Plastics Paradox, and one of the headlines you cite is about Coca-Cola in that Coca-Cola was so

00:09:22.100 committed to reducing its carbon footprint, they got rid of aluminum and switched to plastic bottle

00:09:27.460 collection. So here you have, again, a company saying, oh, wow, we have to do the right thing for the

00:09:31.300 environment. Plastic is the environmentally superior alternative. Yes. The only way to

00:09:37.220 know what's more harmful and less harmful is something called a life cycle analysis. And that's

00:09:41.460 accepted by governments and NGOs and companies all around the world. And it's scientifically proven

00:09:45.540 for 50 years and homes to become better and better. And it's peer reviewed. So it's hard to cheat,

00:09:50.260 right? And there are five such studies on drink containers that you just mentioned. And they all say

00:09:54.900 that the plastic bottle causes least harm. So why would you ever go to metal or glass, which is scientifically

00:10:00.580 proven to cause vastly more harm? And I'm not just talking about CO2, vastly more fossil fuel burned,

00:10:06.100 because you need a lot of energy to melt glass and metal, and more of the other things as well,

00:10:11.220 like eutrophication and acid rain and so forth. When you switch to an alternative, you end up with more

00:10:16.500 waste and more harm in almost every parameter you can measure. Yeah. And the thing is that we have to look

00:10:22.980 at what we are creating plastic to replace and what those alternatives are. I mean, people would love to

00:10:29.540 say, all right, let's take the plastic bottle away. And sure, you know, maybe we could all use a

00:10:33.620 reusable water bottle that somehow is better than a plastic water bottle. But for the most part,

00:10:39.140 I don't think it works out. And anyone who's ever had reusable grocery bags knows you basically buy

00:10:43.700 as many of them as you would use plastic bags because you forget them at home. And somehow I feel

00:10:48.340 that it's more intensive here. But plastic is replacing something. And you know, I'll read the list that you

00:10:54.260 have here, paper, cotton, glass, and metal. You have to pick one material of those and plastic is

00:11:02.020 generally the best of them. If you look at 100 lifecycle studies, plastic beats those materials

00:11:07.140 in every study I've seen. The only things that are consistently greener than plastic are wood and wool.

00:11:12.660 And unfortunately, we can't run the internet based on, you know, based on a knitted computer and a

00:11:17.140 and a wooden wooden wire is coming to our house. My wool straw hasn't taken off yet. I need to

00:11:23.060 go back and rework the prototype. So yeah, there are things that are greener than plastic in certain

00:11:28.260 applications. And I say that in my book, because I am genuinely just trying to be honest here and

00:11:32.180 show show people the facts so they can make smart choices. So what we have is a bunch of green groups

00:11:36.660 who as Dr. Patrick Moore said, and I have his book in front of me, here's two of his books. This is a guy who

00:11:41.060 was the president of Greenpeace. And he left in disgust and said they just make up lies for donations.

00:11:46.020 They abandoned the environment decades ago, according to him. And the other big green groups did the

00:11:50.500 same thing. They're making hundreds of millions from just saying things that aren't true when you

00:11:54.180 check the science. And that's the problem, because government's listening to these people. I was just

00:11:58.020 in Ottawa with a bunch of these people all around telling, you know, just telling whoppers all day

00:12:02.820 long, whereas the plastics people are in there spending hundreds of millions of their own money,

00:12:06.820 losing money sometimes, doing things which are the right thing to do, even though they might not

00:12:11.060 be profitable. It's exactly the wrong way around. When we're kids, we're taught that it's the big bad

00:12:14.660 industry. And then there are these crusaders for truth. But this has been distorted and turned the

00:12:19.380 other way around, where the people that we think crusade for truth are just telling us lies all the

00:12:23.940 time. So let me ask you, and I fear I know the answer to this, but perhaps you can set me at ease.

00:12:29.540 Do governments call you up? Do politicians call you up when they're putting these policies in place? Or

00:12:34.660 is it done completely in the absence of all this evidence you've collected over the years?

00:12:39.140 Yes. So as I said, this is a hobby and for the first three years, so I've done it all unpaid,

00:12:43.060 not a single penny. Right. And in the beginning, people were really like shocked at the message

00:12:47.780 because I had never heard, they'd never seen the truth before. So they were rightfully amazed. And

00:12:51.620 I said, well, please look, because there are two sides and one side has the evidence on it.

00:12:55.060 So now we're a few years later and I'm being asked to give speeches and governments are asking me.

00:12:59.620 So the Canadian shadow government has asked me to testify and show the facts. And the United Arab Emirates

00:13:05.060 said, hey, we don't want to make the same mistakes that they made in Europe and in America and Canada.

00:13:08.980 We want to start afresh, look at the evidence and then make policies because

00:13:12.580 you mentioned bags a second ago and there was a bag ban in New Jersey and they looked afterwards

00:13:16.900 to see what happened. And what happened after the ban was just what you said would happen.

00:13:20.740 They had vastly higher sales of plastic because these very thin plastic bags had to be replaced

00:13:25.860 with much thicker bags. So you go and buy an actual garbage can liner, which is five times thicker than a

00:13:31.700 transparent polyethylene grocery bag. And they had what they said was exponentially more greenhouse gas.

00:13:37.380 And that's exactly what we would have predicted by the 30 studies which are published

00:13:41.060 that said that that would happen. And instead, they just implement these policies.

00:13:44.660 And it literally takes you 10 seconds to do a Google search. You can go into Google now and type in LCA

00:13:50.020 BAG and you will find peer reviewed lifecycle studies. Why has no politician ever done that?

00:13:55.460 Why hasn't Greenpeace or the World Wildlife Fund or Ellen MacArthur Foundation in the last years and years and years

00:14:01.140 has ever occurred to them to do a Google search on the very topic that they claim to care about?

00:14:05.540 That is shocking. And that really shows what their true motives are.

00:14:08.980 Well, I'm glad you've made your book available for free. They have no excuse to

00:14:12.660 not read it. The Plastics Paradox. I dug into it this week and I hope to finish it on the weekend.

00:14:18.820 But Dr. Chris DeArmit, thank you so much, sir. Really great to talk to you.

00:14:22.580 Thanks for caring about evidence. I really respect that. Cheers.

00:14:24.900 All right. I appreciate your appreciation of it. Thank you, Chris.

00:14:28.020 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - April 29, 2024

Plastics expert slams claim that plastic is “toxic”

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