Speaker key:
CH Christian Lindmeier
BG Bruce Gordon
JF Jennifer de France
PF Pamela Falk
JO Jonathan
FA Fabrice
TO Tom
SA Sarah
EM Erin Michael
AG Agnes
CF Colin Fernandez
CH On WHO's release of the first report on microplastics in drinking water. Apologies again for all those who came in first and tried other lines that didn't work. We haven't quite yet figured out why this happened but are glad for those who've now made it in through other lines. Again apologies for this but this is why we've been holding...
At the same time we will also be sending the audio files of this press briefing after the press briefing, very shortly, in order to reach all those who couldn't make it now. If you then want to ask a question, let me remind everyone, please dial 0 1 on your touchpad or your keypad to get into the queue for questions. We would hope that this works much better than the call-in at this point in the beginning.
With this, I'm very happy that I'm joined here by two of our main experts on this matter. For one it's Dr Bruce Gordon, co-ordinator for water, sanitation and hygiene at the department of public health and environment at WHO; and Jennifer de France, who's the technical expert on water, sanitation and hygiene in the same department and she's also a co-author of the report. Thank you very much both for being here.
This is a very exciting and a very emotional topic right now all over the world so we're looking forward to hearing from you and after the initial remarks of course we're open for questions from the phone lines. Thank you and over to you.
BG Okay. This is Bruce Gordon. Good afternoon. I'm going to give you a very brief summary of the report findings and also with my colleague Jennifer, who will talk about some of the research needs. First of all this is the first ever report that WHO has done looking at the potential human health effects of microplastics in the environment.
This report specifically examines the question of drinking water quality and whether the microplastics that have been found - which have been found in rivers, in lakes, in waste water and indeed in drinking water - have an impact. We know from the data that we have reviewed that we're ingesting them and we know that that's caused concern among consumers.
The headline message is to reassure drinking water consumers around the world that, based on this assessment, our assessment of the risk is that it is low. We've done this in three ways. The health concerns, the health threats essentially focus around three elements. One is the physical hazards potentially presented by the particles themselves so while plastic is inert and doesn't chemically react there have been questions raised about whether it disseminates in the body and organs and causes problems.
Plastic also has additives in it that are sometimes chemicals that are contaminants that have been well-characterised. We've looked at those and we've also looked at the issue of whether there are biofilms, whether bacteria colonise these microplastics and present health issues.
So very briefly we know that most particles, the vast majority or all particles above 150 micrometres in diameter are passing through the gut without being absorbed and the vast, vast majority of smaller ones are doing so as well.
As far as chemicals, having examined the occurrence data - that is the concentrations that were found in drinking water - and taking a worst-case scenario we've concluded that the maximum exposure that we would anticipate based on currently available data is much lower than the exposure level that we might be concerned at if there was to be an adverse effect.
Finally with respect to colonisation of microplastic particles we know that these particles are very, very small contributors to what normally bacteria would colonise in terms of biofilms and pipe distribution systems or other particles in the environment so we believe this is a negligible effect.
So again, the conclusions are there's a low health risk; we also looked at waste water treatment and drinking water treatment systems which, if operated efficiently, can reduce sufficiently the levels of microplastic. However there are a number of uncertainties and research gaps that Jennifer will talk about in just one moment.
Finally on the recommendations, we need to keep the focus on known risks. We know now from our WHO data and UNICEF data that two million people drink water currently that is faecally contaminated and that causes almost one million deaths per year. That has got to be the focus of regulators around the world and we don't recommend that regulators be monitoring for microplastics routinely. However we do recommend some investigative research.
We also are strongly pushing and promoting that we do more globally to reduce plastic pollution and that is out of concern for this great amount of occurrence that we are seeing that is of concern; it is everywhere. That's irrespective of any human health assessment. I'll pass it over to Jennifer.
JF Okay. Based on the conclusions of our report, while we think that the risks to human health are low this is based on a limited evidence base and we recognise that there is need for more research. The WHO report notes a number of data gaps and here I'd like to highlight three of the top-priority areas.
The first is related to better understanding the occurrence of microplastics in the water cycle, including in drinking water, where in particular there is really a very low number of studies. These investigative studies need to be well-designed, quality-controlled and provide information so that we know the number of particles that have been detected, the sizes of these particles, the shapes as well as the chemical composition.
The studies also need to give enough information about where the source of contamination is coming from. Where is contamination coming from? Is it coming from the source water? If so what are the inputs into the source water? Or is it coming throughout the water supply chain from treatment or distribution? Although recognising that treatment should be able to effectively remove microplastic particles, more data needs to be done to investigate that.
The second research area to highlight is looking at the impacts of the microplastic particles themselves. Bruce already mentioned about the particles themselves potentially causing impact, particularly for the smallest particles so really for these smallest-sized particles where there's really limited evidence we need to know more about what's being absorbed, the distribution and their impacts.
Then finally we need to know more about the human health risks from microplastics exposure throughout the total environment so we know microplastics are throughout the environment, in our drinking water, in our air and food so this report focused on drinking water and there's a need to consider the other environmental pathways. So recognising this, WHO has already initiated a review looking at the risks to human health from microplastics through total environmental exposure.
CH Thank you very much. Let's not forget, there are many other fields of these microplastics in food, in the air which this study has not been looking at but are also definitely of concern. With this, thank you both very much for the initial comments and we are ready for questions. I'm looking to see whether we have any on the line. Apologies again for those who just came in late in order to dial in because some of the lines apparently have been jammed so thank you for joining now.
We will be sending an embargoed transcript and the embargoed audio files of this briefing soon after; the audio files very soon after; the transcript will take a while. With this we open the lines; again with 0 1 on your keypad you'll get into the queue. We're starting with CBS. Cameron - if I've got the name right - please go ahead if you hear us.
PF Thank you very much. It's Pamela Falk from CBS. You originally started the study, according to the report, based on the concerns of the Brasilia [?] study that did find pathogens associated with microplastics. What did you conclude about that study to bring you to the conclusion that it is a low concern for you in health? Could you also add how much the study cost? Did the bottled water companies in any way weigh in or did their views of what they said after the Brasilia study? Thank you.
CH Thank you very much, Pamela, and sorry for the name hiccup. Bruce, would you want to take that?
BG Yes, I'll take that. Starting with the funders of the study and the costs, this was funded by Norway. All WHO funding around drinking water is funded by member states. I'm not sure of the costs, what they might add up to but it's probably around 60, $70,000 but the point that I would make is that we're relying on secondary studies. It's literature reviews, it's meeting experts who have all declared expert conflicts of interest so that is available and the authorship is transparent in the report.
The bottled water industry had nothing to do with this report and in fact you'll see in the report that bottled water plastic particle counts are slightly higher than tap water but we could get into that later.
As far as pathogens, our main concern, as I said before, was that there are two billion people drinking water in the world that likely has some evidence of faecal contamination and thus a host of pathogens. Those pathogens are sometimes carried by particulates in water so turbid water for instance, water that's cloudy is often very likely or more likely to have pathogens in it and be a concern.
So based on the relative importance of the vast amount of particles and other biofilms that might be attracting micro-organisms the microplastic particles' contribution to that is quite negligible.
CH Thank you very much. Pamela, does this answer your question?
PF Yes. Just one little follow-up; Dr Stephanie Wright at the time said those particles could stay within an immune cell in the gut lining. Did you look into that?
BG This would be a phagocyte. One of the things that we did review very carefully were the animal studies that looked at absorption of microplastics into their system and one of the shortcomings of these studies was that the concentrations of microplastics that were applied to these animals were absolutely so high that they overwhelmed some of the systems and they weren't relevant at those concentrations to human exposure, which would be a lot lower.
That theoretically could be a possibility, having these cells overwhelmed with particles such that they couldn't produce an immune response that would be normal but we believe it would be very unlikely based on the concentrations that we reviewed.
CH Thank you very much, Bruce.
PF Thank you very much.
CH Thank you, Pamela. With this we move to our next questions from the Guardian. Jonathan, over to you, please.
JO Hi, thanks very much. First of all can I just request the report itself? I sent a couple of emails but I haven't yet been able to read the report so I'd be very grateful if someone could email me that. It does mean I'm asking this question blind but I'd be interested to know, among the studies that you saw, what were the highest concentrations of microplastics and where they were found.
Following up on what you were saying in your answer to the last question, is there a measurement, a level of concentration at which you might start to become concerned about the quantity overwhelming systems? What's the band where that might happen? Thank you.
CH Thank you very much, Jonathan. Apologies if you haven't got the report because we sent it out to basically - I thought - everyone who requested it and we must have missed you but we'll soon rectify this of course.
JO Thank you.
CH With this I hand over to Jennifer for some details.
JF The concentrations of microplastic particles found in drinking water were very broad. There was a huge range from zero to 1,000 particles on average, to individual samples having over 10,000 particles. The particle numbers themselves are - you can't assess risk just based on that because, as mentioned earlier on, these particles - the impacts that they can have are dependent on a number of properties and that also includes the size.
The larger particles are not likely going to be absorbed in the body, they're going to be excreted out so that needs to be considered.
BG Can I just come in here for a second, Jonathan? Because it's an interesting question about particle counts. Everyone is concerned about using that as a metric to compare whether one situation is worse than another and this is where we have had a big issue with the studies and the comparability of the studies.
Because to say, okay, one source of water has 1,000 microparticles per litre and another has one could simply be dependent on the filter size used and that's basically what we found. I think we're basically still at a point where the study quality, the methods were quite weak and to be able to compare with confidence using microparticle counts as a metric for pollution, if you will; I think we're still in very early days with that so I would really caution... Whenever I see reports with numbers I just think, what filter size did you use?
CH Thank you very much for this clarification. Jonathan, does this answer your questions?
JO Yes, thank you. Yes, that helps.
CH Yes, thank you. We hope to get the report to you any moment. Sorry for that again. Now moving to the next, Fabrice [unclear]. I'm not sure that I see your outlet here. Could you please clarify your outlet? Thank you.
FA It's ID News. It's in Geneva.
CH Thank you.
FA New media so that's maybe why you don't know it. My first question is related to - how did you assess the risk of nanoplastics being associated with [unclear] and that - I don't know - maybe in the stomach, in the gut they might be fragmented more and the additives released. Is it something that you have any information about, were there reports about this specific risk of further fragmentation in the body and a release of additives?
BG Fabrice, thank you for that question. I think there're two issues I'd like to respond to with that. The first is the issue of nanoplastics as, let's just say, inert particles and to what extent they diffuse in the body. There is very little information about that. That is one piece of research that Jennifer highlighted that needs to be pursued.
But if you think about the issue of additives and chemicals being absorbed, the way that we did it in the report was we essentially took the data so that concentration of a particular chemical contaminant that was actually found in marine microplastic and then we made a series of worst-case-scenario assumptions about size, particle counts, etc, to come up with what was a likely ingestion exposure so what we were exposed to.
Because some of the chemicals or many of the chemicals are quite well-characterised in the scientific literature, they have a safe limit where you wouldn't see any adverse effects, we basically compared what we believe your maximum exposure could be to that safe limit of this panel of contaminants and we found that there was quite a substantive safety margin so hundreds of... quite a cushion there between anything that you might expect to see any adverse effects...
JF To add to that, considering the highest concentrations that we found of microplastics in the environment, we assumed that these chemicals were 100% bioavailable in the gut and there are some studies on bioavailability. That depends on multiple factors where in some cases it's not going to be 100% bioavailable. It depends on what food is in your gut, it depends on whether there are other chemical contaminants, etc, that are already in the gut from other sources where the microplastic could potentially take up chemicals from other sources.
So it's a complex issue but we assumed 100%, the worst-case bioavailability. in the gut.
CH Thank you very much for this. Now we're moving on to Tom Isoberg or something like this, calling from Belgium. Could you please clarify your name and the outlet? Thank you.
TO Yes, hello. This is Tom Isoberg speaking, from Belgian newspaper De Standaard. Could you elaborate on the differences you found between tap water and bottled water and more specifically on the sources of both, being ground water or river water or source water, whatever? Could one of you elaborate on those findings?
CH Thank you very much for this. Jennifer, please.
JF First just to highlight, there really are a limited number of drinking water studies so studies in drinking water of microplastics just started in 2018 and we assessed nine different studies. In general what we found was that bottled water did contain higher particle numbers compared to tap water but again there're limited studies and, as Bruce mentioned, we need to be cautious about comparing the numbers when a lot of this also depends on the methods that have been used.
In terms of what types of particles, in drinking water in general - so I'm lumping these together - often... The two polymers that were most frequently detected were polyethylene terephthalate and polypropylene. These polymers - polyethylene terephthalate is often used in producing bottled water bottles and polypropylene is often used to produce caps.
However there were other polymers detected as well and so more studies are needed to make a firm conclusion about where the sources are coming from.
CH Bruce, do you want to add anything?
BG Maybe I'd add just one thing again. Sorry to get into the nuts and bolts of the methods but if you look at some of the concentrations in rivers and so fresh water before it's filtered you would have a larger filter size and so you would see fewer particles.
Then when you start looking at bottled water and tap water the vast majority of the researchers would use quite fine particles [sic] and so they would capture more particles. So yes, we did find, as Jennifer said, higher particle counts in bottled water and there's been some suspicion, as some of you know from the primary studies, that some has come from the bottle cap and some has come from the packaging process and the bottle itself.
CH Thank you. Again, hence the strong call for standardised research methods in order to be comparable not only by source but also to compare country levels and to compare thresholds. Now we move on to the Daily Telegraph in the UK. Sarah I have on my list. Please. Sarah from the Daily Telegraph, do you hear us?
No. I don't see... I'll try to move to the next caller. Maybe in the meantime, to remind you all, please dial 0 1 on your keypad if you want to get into the line for the next questions. Also we will send the audio files right after this briefing and will also try to send the transcript as soon as possible afterwards.
What we might want to highlight again is that although microplastics are a huge concern now emotionally in the public and are a topic for food, for water, for the environment, for marine life and should definitely be a big concern for us, I guess we can say the findings we have seen so far with the limited research - and that's something we need to underline, I guess - have been pretty reassuring for human consumers. Is this a fair assessment?
BG Absolutely, yes. I would suspect that as we move into the future we're going to see more and more studies. We've actually seen an exponential rise in terms of the studies as we were doing the report so we had to put a cut-off on it but we're going to see more and more studies on occurrence of microplastics not only in waters, in drinking water but also in air, food packaging, all those sorts of things.
Then the question becomes what is total exposure but I think as far as drinking water goes it's clear that there are known risks, both microbial and chemical in nature, that continue to challenge us in terms of just securing safe water for everyone and those risks, that situation is so significant in terms of access in the world.
Again there're two billion people in the world not having access to safe water. We really need to focus around having good priorities with regulation and good priorities with research to make sure that we can wipe out some of these diseases and risks associated with that.
CH Okay, thank you. Jennifer, you seem to have noted something.
JF Yes, thanks. I just wanted to go back to this question about bottled water versus tap water and I just want to re-emphasise that overall we found very large concentration ranges in bottled water as well as in tap water so I don't want to make sweeping conclusions about bottled water against tap water. Again there's a limited number of studies so we really need more studies before drawing firm conclusions on that.
CH Thank you; again a call for more studies. Let me try again now with Sarah from the Telegraph. Hopefully we've got the line clear now. Sarah, do you hear me?
SA Hello, can you hear me?
CH Yes, very well, thank you. Please go ahead.
SA Brilliant. Thank you very much. I just wanted to know, given the conclusions of this report, if you think that the risks of microplastics in drinking water for human health have previously been overstated.
CH That's a good question actually. What's our point on this?
BG I think that there is a lot of concern and it's not just microplastics but I think a lot of emerging contaminants, whether they're supposed endocrine disruptors or whatever it might be, certainly chemicals; they seize public consciousness, as you said, Christian.
So I have personally seen when I've trolled [sic] through the web and looked at things that there does seem to be some inaccurate information out there about human health. I think a lot of the reports that I've seen point to this exposure, which is concerning so in other words it is present in material x, y and z and then the question is what does this mean for human health?
Then everyone gets very worried and that's the reason we did the report, because of this question. I'm not saying this is the last word on the assessment of human health because we need to get into some of the broader environmental issues but certainly, as we've been saying throughout the interview, there are known hazards and risks that are a lot more significant.
CH There's definitely the emotional factor to it, that nobody - including myself - likes the idea of having plastic pass through their body. But at the same time, I guess, it's a good thought to know that it's passing through literally and doesn't stay in your body. Thank you for this.
Next on the line is Erin Michael or Mikael. Please tell us your name and the outlet.
EM Hi, this is Erin Michael from Helio Primary Care. This is bouncing off the last question. What should physicians tell their patients who are concerned about microplastics in drinking water?
CH Here we go. What are the recommendations?
BG The overall conclusion is really that consumers shouldn't be too worried but there're many dimensions to this story that are beyond health. What I mean by that is if you are a concerned citizen that is worried about plastic pollution and you have access to a well-managed pipe supply, a water supply why not drink from that, why not reduce pollution?
Of course there are times when you need a water bottle if you're walking around but please reuse it. I think if I was a physician I would give some of these comments and some messages around the environment and would certainly suggest this shouldn't be at the top of anyone's worry list when it comes to their own personal health.
JF Just to add to that, even though it's not an overall concern, just to re-emphasise, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't be tackling the plastic pollution problem. That is a real concern and more should be done by all stakeholders to address the plastic pollution problem for a variety of reasons.
CH Thank you. The next in line, calling from Germany most likely, is Gerno or Gernot or Anise. Please help us out here. Anise or Gernot calling from Germany, can you hear us? No. Then we'll try one more time to get you on in case it's a question of connection. Otherwise we're through with questions in the queue.
Any summary statement? Although together with the recommendations that were just asked maybe we've done most of our recommendations and summaries already but any statement from the floor here?
BG Maybe just - it relays off that last concern about what to tell the public. I think that as there continue to be media coverage and scientific reports around microplastics, to be helpfully - I don't want to say skeptical but you have to keep in mind this is a very emerging area. Even the research that we had at our disposal was quite limited but we do know that as far as drinking water, waste water treatment, as Jennifer mentioned, can remove more than 90%.
There are great filters and treatment options available in many countries that can remove it from drinking water as well. The key actions, I think, are to really think about recycling, think about reusing waste, all those basics that we learned a long time ago and really to try to promote that politicians enforce issues like single-bag or single-use plastic bags when applicable.
We need to stop thinking about this from a perspective of maybe drinking water but think about it as a societal issue with our relationship with plastic and to think about how we can reduce that.
JF Another point I'd like to add is that while waste water treatment can effectively remove microplastics it should be recognised that a substantial proportion of the world do not have access to adequate waste water treatment systems so that should be a priority as well. If you don't have effective waste water treatment systems then there're going to be a lot bigger risks to your fresh water systems and drinking water systems that are impacted by these waste waters, such as microbial pathogens.
So addressing this waste water problem, improving waste water treatment is a win-win in that you're going to be removing microbial pathogens, resulting in reductions in disease but also, two, you can get rid of more microplastics.
CH Thank you very much. It looks as if we have Anise from Germany back on the line so we're taking that last question then. Anise.
AG Yes. In fact I'm in Geneva.
CH Oh, yes, all right. That's the misspelling...
AG That's why I wasn't reacting.
CH All right. So it's neither Anise from Germany... It's Agnes from Geneva AFP. Thank you. Your question, please.
AG Yes, that's right. Okay, thank you, Christian. In fact I have two questions. The first question is about your call for more assessment. I would like to know who should be in charge of that assessment.
Then the second question is about the fact that at the beginning of the conference you said that the risk for human health is low but in the press release it says that it doesn't appear to pose a health risk. Risk low and doesn't appear to pose a health risk are not exactly the same so if you could clarify whether it's a low risk for human health or no risk at all.
What kind of risk are we talking about, what would be the impact on human health?
CH Thank you very much, Agnes, for these clarifying questions. That's very valuable. Maybe let's start with what more assessment, who should do other assessments or who should lead on further assessments and studies.
JF It depends on the research being done but related to better understanding occurrence in drinking water and the water cycle, these really need to be investigative studies conducted by researchers, high-quality studies that are reproducible and comparable and ideally with standard methods once they're developed. This is not a call for water suppliers and regulators to require routine monitoring to understand the levels in drinking water.
Then also, as I highlighted in the beginning, we need to do more assessments from the health side so toxicology studies as well. Really it's primarily for the researchers.
BG Can I just elaborate on what Jennifer said? The first thing is that WHO itself as an institution will be conducting a wider review of microplastics in the environment including food and air so WHO will be leading that - I don't want to say in isolation but as an independent organisation that deals with science.
To do that well we rely on scientists getting good science and, as we've said throughout this press release, the data needs to be done in a way that's comparable and reproducible and sufficient for us to draw a conclusion so we're always having to tackle that issue.
That links to your next question; is the risk low or is it none? Almost any researcher that I would talk to would always talk about low risk and not no risk because there's just so much uncertainty. I know risk is difficult for a layperson to understand and to communicate to the general public but certainly with the data that we have we can say that we believe the risk to be low but at the same time we can't rule out conclusively that there might never be a risk in the future.
Take that as you might but I think that's as far as we can go in terms of the scientific jargon. We're not alarmed though by any means.
CH Thank you very much; an important clarification. Agnes, does that take care of your questions?
AG Yes, thank you.
CH Thank you very much. Now we have an additional last one so after the last comes the last and I see Colin Fernandez. Please clarify your outlet. This will then be our last question. Thank you very much.
CF I'm calling from the Daily Mail in London.
CH Thank you.
CF My question is, should washing machine makers do more to filter plastic microfibres coming from the wash? At the moment washing machines don't stop microplastic microfibres getting into waste water. I was wondering if you think that regulations need to be tightened up to stop washing machines polluting water with plastic microfibres from synthetic textiles.
CH Thank you very much, Colin. I'll look to Jennifer for that one.
JF Yes, thank you for the question. In addressing this plastic pollution problem and microplastic problem it really needs to be a multi-pronged approach. There's no magic-bullet solution for this. I think you're mentioning washing machines in particular because a number of studies, including our own report, state that wear and tear of clothing, textiles is considered to be a significant contributor to the microplastic pollution in freshwater environments as well as in air and other sources.
The data on the inputs of microplastics into the environment is not well-characterised so this is based on more a modelling than an actual data, just to say. At the same time I think what your question highlights is that addressing this problem of plastic pollution requires action by all stakeholders, including industry so addressing or improving washing machines to capture these fibre [unclear] could be one option to consider out of many.
CH Thank you very much. Colin, does this take care of your question?
CF Yes, perhaps what are the other options then, just briefly, if not just washing machines what other things?
JF Yes, thanks. It could go from the legislation to ban microbeads which many countries have already done and single-use plastics to better recycling programmes to requiring other industries to minimise release of plastics and microplastics into the environment as well.
BG Can I just follow up on this? I think we're talking about maybe two things here. One is microplastics as, say, beads or fibres being released and then the other is just all the plastics that are currently being used for everything from industry automotive, personal use, food packaging, water bottles, fragmenting into small particles. As Jennifer was highlighting, the relative contribution of all these things isn't really well known and when we think about regulation we have to think about cost and so that prioritisation exercise is something that is also a research priority.
But it's quite a complex issue because these plastics are coming from everywhere and we use them all every day but certainly I think you did nail one issue and that is that the issue of fibres is something that people are concerned about and that we're seeing.
CH And should normally be filtered out in a good water treatment plant. All right, thank you very much, Colin, for your last question. Let me remind everyone that this briefing is under embargo as the press release and the accompanying material were, until 00:01 tonight GMT, which is 2:00 in Geneva.
Thank you all for being here and I think Dr Bruce Gordon and Dr Jennifer de France for being here and leading this topic. Thank you all for staying with us and apologies again for the delay with the non-functioning telephone lines. All the best and we'll be sending audio files shortly. Thank you.
JF Thanks.