Esme Stallard
Appearances
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Tea for two - sharing a brew with a stranger
So microplastics can sort of enter our waterways, seas, rivers, general environment in kind of two ways. There's what we call primary microplastics. So this is where they're already very small. So an example of this is when you wash your clothes, fibres can come off your clothes and enter your waterways. And actually, that's a really big source of it.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Tea for two - sharing a brew with a stranger
there's also little bits of particles from your tyres is another really major source runs off roads and then there's secondary microplastics so this is when you a complete product like a plastic water bottle or a plastic bag gets thrown away and then the natural environment breaks that down to smaller and smaller particles it's kind of
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Tea for two - sharing a brew with a stranger
difficult I would say to overestimate the scale of the problem you know at the moment the evidence around the harm to humans is kind of incomplete but there are serious concerns and that's because a lot of plastics have harmful toxins or additives put into them to kind of enable them to form their function and we've seen you know plastic particles harming particularly marine wildlife and
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Tea for two - sharing a brew with a stranger
That's why it's so concerning that it's being found within our bloodstreams and there's ongoing research around that.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Tea for two - sharing a brew with a stranger
They're calling it a fibrous foam, but it's basically made out of two main materials. One is cellulose, which they've extracted from cotton, and the other is something called chitin, which they've taken from the skeleton or from the structure of a squid. which seems very strange. But chitin is actually very, very common. It's in various different organisms and insects, crustaceans, but also fungi.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Tea for two - sharing a brew with a stranger
Effectively, it's long chains of carbohydrates. So they're the two main materials that they've used. And it's actually really kind of crucial to the success of this solution that they've used those materials because they're so abundant, which makes it quite cheap to produce.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Tea for two - sharing a brew with a stranger
It was 99.9% successful in the first use of it. But what they found that was also really good is that they could almost recycle it. So they used it four or five times in their experiments. And even after five uses, the effectiveness was still about 95%, which is really significant. And it really helps to kind of lower the cost again in the manufacturing process.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Tea for two - sharing a brew with a stranger
These are two really abundant materials in the natural environment. Chitin is actually the most abundant polysaccharide, which is what it is. And as I said, it's found in many sources, which is fantastic.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Tea for two - sharing a brew with a stranger
But the other thing that's really, really good about this is one of the other main limitations to scaling up these types of solutions is that they can often involve very complex processes and sometimes the need to add toxic chemicals to that process.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Tea for two - sharing a brew with a stranger
But actually, what's amazing that the scientists have done here is something called self-assembly, which is basically these two materials have been forced together And it's able to create this structure naturally. And that's really fantastic because it cuts down the production process and the complexity of it.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Tea for two - sharing a brew with a stranger
And so the scientists in this case are hoping certainly that it can be scaled up quickly. They're currently applying for a patent for the material and they're searching for industrial partners to see if it can be produced, as we say, on a bigger scale.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Tea for two - sharing a brew with a stranger
I'm only glad you're here to receive your wallet back again.
Global News Podcast
Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine
Agitation has been growing among fellows of the Royal Society over Elon Musk's behaviour towards the scientific community.
Global News Podcast
Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine
They've claimed his actions, which include his role in funding cuts for US government scientific research, censorship of climate change issues and attacks on the former US chief medical advisor and society fellow Anthony Fauci, amount to a breach of the organisation's code of conduct. The society has investigated Mr Musk twice before and opted for no action.
Global News Podcast
Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine
But after two fellows resigned and more than 3,300 scientists put their names to a letter expressing deep concern, it's been forced to call what's being described as an unprecedented meeting. Not all fellows are supportive of Mr Musk's expulsion. Some are concerned it could be seen as political interference. The meeting is private and it's unclear if any decision will be made public.