Shadowing Practice: Why Scientists Are Warning Us About Everyday Plastics | 60 Minutes Australia - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Coming up on 60 Minutes, a world choked by plastic.
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We're the guinea pigs for thousands of new chemicals.
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New data reveal shocking details.
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We've got plastic in our brains.
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About just what it's doing to you and me.
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So am I putting my kids in danger?
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That's the million dollar question, isn't it?
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That's next on 60 Minutes.
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Convenient, durable and cheap.
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Plastic products are an everyday part of everyone's lives.
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But for all of the benefits, it's becoming increasingly obvious the planet is paying a price.
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We are now living in a world choked by plastic.
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Most of us are aware the oceans are awash with the stuff and wildlife is dying because of it.
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But it's now time to also consider the impact and harm plastic is having on humans.
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As you'll see, it's truly shocking how it's invading our bodies.
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Welcome to my home.
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Money!
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Come on in.
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There's probably no such thing as a typical Australian house, but mine is just like many others.
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Three school -aged kids, a hard -working husband and father topped off with a sometimes too inquisitive wife and mother, me.
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There's no question our home is full of love.
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But what I'm not so sure about is if it's also full of danger from plastics.
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How are you, Scott?
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Good, how are you?
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I'm very well, thank you.
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Come on in.
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Thank you.
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Three weeks ago, Eco -toxicologist, Dr Scott Wilson, came in to try and answer that question.
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The scientists started by strategically placing petri dishes in different rooms to collect dust.
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Well, this is a house of chaos with three young kids.
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What are you expecting to find?
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You're going to have products that are releasing microplastics either into your food
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or into the air that you're then breathing or your kids are breathing.
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Plastic is so prevalent, you can't ever remove it.
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My husband Luke has been worried about plastic for a while, and now so am I.
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How does our house measure up?
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Is it bad news?
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Hold your horses, hold your horses.
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A little later, the full results of that experiment in my home.
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But first, facing the uncomfortable truth about how ubiquitous plastics are in our lives.
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Few of us think about it, but we're eating, drinking and, yes, breathing them in enormous quantities.
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Sure, we might be worried about the damage they cause to the world's oceans and wildlife.
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But what about the threat they pose to humans?
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You and me.
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I think if people realised how much plastic was going through their bodies, they would actually feel a bit squeamish.
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Do you think people have any idea what plastic is doing to us?
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The majority, I would say, wouldn't.
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In stark contrast to my home, it's almost impossible to find anyone using plastic in the Lucas household.
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And that's not surprising, given that both Michaela
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and Andrew Lucas are scientists on a crusade to prove that plastic is a silent,
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toxic threat loitering in our everyday lives.
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What haunts you about plastic?
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If these plastic particles are getting into our body, they're staying there.
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We're becoming a garbage patch.
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I think we are the garbage patch already, but we just don't know the size of the garbage patch yet.
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By garbage patch, they're talking about two evils evils,
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microplastics, tiny, almost invisible shards that break off plastic products and get into our food,
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drink and the air we breathe.
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And then there are the toxic chemicals that leak out of them.
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The ones we know the most about are called phthalates and bisphenols, commonly referred to as BPA.
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And this is where the science gets really scary.
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How many plastic chemicals are there?
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Well, in a study that looked at the various chemicals added, they found up to 16 ,000 different chemicals.
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that have been added to plastics.
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And where do all these chemicals come from?
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So since the 1950s, there's been an explosion in the ability to synthesise all sorts of different types of chemicals.
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Because they're associated with a very big industry, they just get introduced and used without any testing.
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And we're really the guinea pigs for the exposure of thousands of new chemicals.
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How long have you been concerned about plastic?
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I've been concerned about plastic for about five years now.
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What do we do about this thing that we are constantly exposed to, that we know has got concerning evidence around emerging health problems and yet...
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Like Michaela and Andrew Lucas,
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GP Dr Kate Wiley fears the unknown consequences of plastics on both the planet and her patients.
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We've got plastic in our brains.
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We've got plastic in our reproductive organs.
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There's plastic in human placentas.
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What Kate thinks about plastic is alarming, but she's the first to admit that her fears are not definitive.
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There needs to be much more scientific proof, which she says is still decades away.
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What do we know that these particles are doing to us?
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Well, this is a problem we don't really know yet.
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So as a GP, you know, I can't say that, you know, X plastic product causes Y disease,
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but the emerging evidence is around things like increasing our risks of heart attack and stroke.
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We've got emerging data about plastics being associated with dementia, which is a very concerning thing.
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As I really want to caveat, you know, this stuff is not a done deal.
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We don't really have all the information we need, but the emerging data is enough that we should We should show caution about it.
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Five months ago, Professor Michaela and Dr Andrew Lucas released their own data about the dangers of plastics, which stunned the world.
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For their study, instead of adding plastics to a control group, they removed the threat to see what would happen.
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We said, OK, what about if we drop exposure to these chemicals? can we drop
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that and will it have a health benefit?
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So we immediately shifted from what Hamid does to how do we treat it.
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At the start of the experiment, the Lucases analysed urine samples of more than 200 people,
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finding at least six toxic chemicals in each participant.
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They were then made to live for seven days with minimal exposure to plastics.
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from their toothpaste to their underwear, herbs and spices, even cooking utensils.
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Plastic was taboo during the study.
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We asked people, they were still living in their house, they were still going to work,
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but we gave them food that had never touched plastic or had a low plastic exposure during processing and packaging.
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The results were astounding.
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In just that one week, the level of plastic chemicals found in each person reduced by up to 60%.
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Were you shocked by the results?
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I was very happy to see the results.
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We were, you know, very surprised that we were able to reduce it in such a short period of time.
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But it also gave us really hope that we can turn things around and in the long run, if you do that day -to -day,
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will have a long -term health benefit.
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Coming up, the dire warning.
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Act now or risk a reproductive wipeout.
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Now, if we get that wrong, it's the end of the human race, right?
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There's nothing Cal Glansnig likes better than starting his day in the water.
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Since he was a school kid, the now 26 -year -old has been campaigning to protect the ocean from plastic.
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But now he's learning he also needs to protect himself.
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With all the research that's come out, I've actually been learning more about what it's doing to our own bodies and our own health,
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and that's absolutely petrified me because I don't think enough Australians know the truth of what plastic's doing to us.
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Two years ago, Cal turned to local politics to champion his cause
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and was elected to his local council in Sydney's Sutherland Shire.
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He's also made a documentary.
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using himself as a guinea pig to prove that humans are becoming more plastic.
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For the first time, it made me think about the future in a different way.
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Not just the planet's, but mine.
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Tell me about that and why did you do that?
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I wanted to do that because I'm someone who's cut so much plastic out of my life, as much as, you know, you sort of can.
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Like, I don't drink out of plastic water bottles and switch out plastic topping balls, like all these different things.
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So I thought, alright, I'll get tested and I'll see, OK, this is in me, it's probably in all my friends, all my family, all my community, probably most Australians.
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Even though Cal has been trying to live plastic -free for years,
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the samples he sent to the US for testing showed his body was saturated with toxic chemicals,
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84 % higher than the average American. Were you shocked?
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I was really shocked.
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I remember when my mum heard the results as well, Like, she burst into tears.
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Like, she felt extremely guilty for not just me, but my younger brother as well.
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Like, we used to have, you know, lunch in plastic...
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You know, put plastic in the microwave, put plastic in the dishwasher.
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Like, for so many years, like, Mum and my dad just had no clue of what this was doing.
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For Cal, the news gets worse.
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The toxic chemicals found in his system were phthalates, which researchers suspect are contributing to a global fertility crisis.
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It's a daunting prospect for a young man considering his own future.
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I mean, the fact that phthalates are in me, which is, like, a chemical that's linked to fertility, is, like, yeah, you know, when I want to start to have a family,
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like, to know that that could be a risk and an issue is, like, pretty scary.
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In America, Julie and Eric Isaac know exactly what that uncertainty feels like.
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They spent five years trying to have a baby.
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I remember that feeling of, like, OK, I give up.
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Like, there's nothing I can do.
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It's never gonna happen.
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We had no explanation or reason as to why it was happening.
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People weren't really giving us good reasons.
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Eric was eventually diagnosed with a low sperm count, but when he and Julie had all but given up the idea of becoming parents,
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a moment of serendipity.
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Researchers approached the couple to explore something they'd never contemplated.
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Was the plastic hidden in their everyday lives, sabotaging their dream of starting a family?
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So, after everything you had been through for five years,
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When somebody suggested to you that plastic could be the cause of your infertility, did you believe it?
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Oh, no, I did not believe it at all.
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No, zero.
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We thought, like, oh, this isn't...
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Like, there's no way this study's real.
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Like, what is this, you know?
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And I guess until you have eyes to see the plastics around you
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and really you have some sort of trigger to tell you, like, this might not be good for your health.
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It's just an everyday part of life.
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I genuinely didn't think much about it.
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Desperate for a child, Eric and Julie signed up to a radical three -month human experiment,
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which was then turned into the Netflix documentary The Plastic Detox.
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Alongside five other infertile couples, they removed as much plastic as they could from their lives.
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What happened to your sperm count?
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So, after cutting out plastics and reducing my exposure to phthalates and BPAs as much as possible.
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My sperm count went from 7 million to 77 million in 90 days.
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It's also the quality went up.
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The quality wasn't bad to begin with, but it improved towards the end.
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And you put that down purely to eliminating plastic?
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Yeah, I don't see what else it could have been.
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We changed nothing else about our life, but it's not the plastic pieces in your balls
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or in your testicles that I think you should be worried about it's these chemicals
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that are basically invisible it's like most people don't don't know about it
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one year later voila julie
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and eric were pregnant with little rowan whether it was a stroke of luck
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or their plastic intervention scientists still can't be certain
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but these parents weren't the only winners five of the six couples who took part in the experiment now have babies
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we still go oh is that is
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that our baby we still can't believe it we still ask each other we'll look at each other
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and be like do we actually have a son like is
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this a dream do you want to pinch me like are we so it's the it's the absolute best
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If you ask Professor Sarah Dunlop, those results are no coincidence.
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The head scientist of plastics
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and human health at Western Australia's Mindaroo Foundation says the changes in fertility trends around the world are a significant worry.
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We know if you look at sperm counts in men, in humans, they're declining.
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They've dropped by about 50 % over the last few decades and are predicted to go on declining.
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Now, if we get that wrong, it's the end of the human race, right?
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And her frightening warnings don't end there.
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For couples who do get pregnant, Professor Dunlop says microplastics and toxic chemicals are now even being found in foetuses.
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They're getting into unborn babies.
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Our babies are born pre -polluted.
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We're exposed without our consent.
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It's one giant, uncontrolled experiment on our health, thanks to industrial chemicals.
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That's what outrages me.
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Some of these scientists argue that because you can't see that full picture at the moment, that it's causing unnecessary alarm.
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Again and again, every time we look, we find harm.
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We feel we find statistical links that are consistent.
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So that in itself is giving us a big, big warning bell.
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The more I hear, the more worried I am about what's going to be found
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on the Petri dishes used to collect the tiny particles of plastic I'm unknowingly exposing my own young family to.
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After the break, the results are in and they don't go down well.
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So am I putting my kids in danger?
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That's the, you know, the million -dollar question, isn't it?
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Give you a bottle.
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Yeah.
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Busy mum, Kirsty Sweeney, has made more than a few bottles in her time.
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You never know, dear, how much I love you.
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Little Maisie is baby number three.
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Maisie just has to fit in, doesn't she?
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She does have to fit in.
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Third child, you just slot right into the family.
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Like many parents who want only the best for their children, Kirsty feeds Maisie her milk in a BPA -free bottle,
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meaning the toxic bisphenol chemical in the plastic has been removed.
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What do you know about BPA?
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I guess it's on a lot of packaging.
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You hear about it, you know, in articles.
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You know that you should be looking for things without BPA.
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Do you know anything about what it does to you?
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I know a little bit.
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So I know that, you know, if you're having microplastics and things like BPA can act like hormones in your body.
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Which is true.
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It's scary.
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For years, Australians have believed there was such a thing as safe plastic, especially when buying products for our little ones.
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Professor Michaela and Dr Andrew Lucas have been looking closely at what's actually in BPA -free plastics,
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and they're sorry to say we're not being told the whole truth.
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The way that these bottles are made requires a chemical like BPA,
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and in this case it's a related chemical called BPS, to actually construct and produce that product.
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And unfortunately, they're similar enough to have similar bad properties.
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They've shown the same sort of results for this substitute chemical.
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So, unfortunately, we are not any safer.
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So, BPA -free is a con?
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BPA -free is accurate, but it is a con.
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It's Not News Kirstie was happy to hear.
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She thought she was making a safer choice for her children.
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I think it's misleading.
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I think it's, you know, convincing you that you're buying a product that is safe for your baby and your child.
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But if we don't know about any of the other chemicals and the plastics, then we assume, you know, it's good for us.
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Do you think the people making the BPA -free products know that they're harmful?
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I would say that the people
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that are putting the formulations together understand that the BPS is very similar in its properties to the BPA.
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So why would they do it?
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Because it works and because it's not regulated against.
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So because they're not breaking any rules by doing it?
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That's correct.
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We rely on companies and the regulations to basically tell us what's good and what's not good.
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And if we don't get that information clearly, then how are we supposed to make good choices?
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My days of buying BPA -free bottles and dummies are well behind me.
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But I'm concerned there are other harmful plastics around my home.
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After leaving Petri dishes scattered throughout my house for three weeks,
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ecotoxicologist Dr Scott Wilson is about to deliver results I'm not sure I want to hear.
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Is it bad news?
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Hold your horses.
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Hold your horses.
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It turns out the Clancy home has higher levels of plastic than the average Australian household.
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But it's not where I expect it.
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Interestingly, we're finding the bedroom comes up as the highest fibre count.
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Where my darling little eight -year -old sleeps.
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That's correct.
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So, we're finding more than double what you've got in the kitchen or the bathroom and,
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let's say, four times as much as the living room.
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Where could that plastic be coming from?
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It could be a toy, it could be a carpet, it could be a clothing, it could be just everyday containers.
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So, am I putting my kids in danger?
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That's the million -dollar question, isn't it?
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So, I got the results...
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Given my husband, Luke, has been worried about plastic for some time, I knew I was in for a difficult conversation.
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Because I don't feel comfortable with what they told me today.
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I kind of had expectations that we would get results that you weren't expecting, but are they bad or...?
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So we're slightly above the average Australian household when it comes to plastics.
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Above the average?
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Above, yeah.
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But that shocked me.
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That shocks me.
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What really got me was 44 % of what they found in this house was in Amelia's room.
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Wow, that does shock me a lot.
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If there's even a tenuous link, if it's a possibility, wouldn't you want to remove it from the kids' bedrooms?
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I would.
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Knowing that my eight -year -old daughter's bedroom has high levels of plastic fibres in it that she's breathing in is alarming.
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Dr Wilson says it's most likely because this room has carpet.
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So what can we do to make our home safer?
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We've started here in the kitchen by simply replacing things like plastic chopping boards and cooking utensils with these wooden ones.
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These small easy steps researchers are adamant will go a long way to shield us from the potential dangers of plastic.
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There's everywhere you look there's plastic and the problem with
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that is that you know we keep making more
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but we're not dealing with it what are we where does
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it go GP dr. Kate Wiley says the days of simply accepting plastic as a convenient
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and cheap option need to be reconsidered whose job is it
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to get control of this situation the industry themselves you know
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they have a responsibility to protect the community from the harm of their product, and then always it comes back to government to make regulations that support community health.
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Dr Wiley says the government is not doing its job
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and needs to do more to not only protect the environment from plastic, but people too.
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We live in this crazy time in human history where we have all these threats that are facing us, that we can name them.
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It's right in front of us.
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It's as plain as the nose on our face, and yet we just fob it off.
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Environmental crusader Cal Glansnick agrees.
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He's made it his mission to shout from every rooftop what he believes is the simple truth, that plastic is not fantastic.
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We say, I've got to recycle more, I've got to cut my own plastic, but it shouldn't be on us.
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Like, we live busy lives, we've got other things to worry about.
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Like, this is a political responsibility because it is a health crisis.
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We're not trying to get ourselves to Mars.
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Like, we're just trying to stop plastic ending up in our ocean, in our animals and in our bodies.
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Have you asked the government why they haven't acted?
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What they've said is that they're not hearing from enough Australians.
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Like, that is the answer from, yeah, the Environment Minister's mouth.
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What did you say back?
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Watch this face.
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The Federal Health Minister's office told us the problem of plastics wasn't their concern and referred us to the Environment Minister, who was unavailable for an interview.
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On this week's podcast, Extra Minutes, Dimity Clancy speaks with Carl Glansnig about ways to free ourselves from plastic.
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What can the everyday Aussie do?
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I think plastic water bottles is such an easy one.
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Australians spend about $560 million on plastic water bottles every single year.
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That's Extra Minutes, available now on the 60 Minutes Australia YouTube channel and your favourite podcast apps.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 310 sentences and 3618 words to shadow. The speech runs for 25:02. The speaker talks at a steady 145 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| shock noun | /ʃɔk/ | A sudden, heavy impact. |
| toxic adjective | /ˈtɒk.sɪk/ | Having a chemical nature that is harmful to health or lethal if consumed or otherwise entering into the body in sufficient quantities. |
| everyday adjective | /ˈɛvɹiˌdeɪ/ | Appropriate for ordinary use, rather than for special occasions. |
| exposure noun | /ɪkˈspəʊ.ʒə(ɹ)/ | The condition of being exposed, uncovered, or unprotected. |
| experiment noun | /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/ | A test under controlled conditions made to either demonstrate a known truth, examine the validity of a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of… |
| breathe verb | /bɹiːð/ | To draw air into (inhale), and expel air from (exhale), the lungs in order to extract oxygen and excrete waste gases. |
| patch noun | /pæt͡ʃ/ | A piece of cloth, or other suitable material, sewed or otherwise fixed upon a garment to repair or strengthen it, especially upon an old garment to cover a… |
| garbage noun | /ˈɡɑɹ.bɪd͡ʒ/ | Food waste material of any kind. |
| emerge verb | /ɪˈmɝd͡ʒ/ | To come into view. |
| harm noun | /hɑːm/ | Physical injury; hurt; damage. |
| household adjective | /ˈhaʊshoʊld/ | Belonging to the same house and family. |
| bedroom noun | /ˈbɛdˌɹum/ | A room in a house, apartment, hotel, or other dwelling where a bed is kept for sleeping. |
| scary adjective | /ˈskɛə.ɹi/ | Causing fear or anxiety |
| alarm noun | /əˈlɑɹm/ | A summons to arms, as on the approach of an enemy. |
| dish noun | /dɪʃ/ | A vessel such as a plate for holding or serving food, often flat with a depressed region in the middle. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come on in verb | Synonym of come in (“to enter”). | |
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. | |
| give up verb | To surrender (someone or something); to inform on (someone). | |
| break off verb | To remove a piece from a whole by breaking or snapping. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| cut out verb | To refrain from (doing something, using something etc.), to stop or cease (doing something). | |
| go down verb | To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 85 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, we're, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: breathe /bɹiːð/, clothing /ˈkloʊðɪŋ/, phthalate /ˈ(f)θæ.leɪt/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: shock /ʃɔk/, exposure /ɪkˈspəʊ.ʒə(ɹ)/, dish /dɪʃ/, contrast /kənˈt(ʃ)ɹæst/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/, fertility /fɝˈtɪləti/, documentary /ˌdɒk.jʊˈmɛn.tɹi/, invisible /ɪnˈvɪzəb(ə)l/, reproductive /ˌɹiːpɹəˈdʌktɪv/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like shock, toxic, everyday.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | has been campaigning · I've actually been learning · has been trying |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has been · have been added · there's been |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are called · have been added · being associated |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.