Hidden Microplastics In Tea, Shampoo & Everyday Products | Josephine Musco
May 11, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readJosephine Musco, founder of the plastic-free tea company Elixir, was 14 when her father was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. That event set her on a path to understand what causes disease, and she came to a conviction that has guided her work ever since: “Your genetic makeup loads the gun, but your lifestyle pulls the trigger.” Her research into environmental toxins eventually landed on a specific, pervasive, and largely invisible category of exposure—microplastics and nanoplastics—and the argument she makes in this conversation is that these particles are a primary, controllable driver of the modern hormone disruption crisis, affecting fertility, metabolism, and even the development of children before birth.
The mechanism: How plastics hijack the body
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What you'll learn
- 1 Hidden Microplastics In Tea, Shampoo & Everyday Products | Josephine Musco
- 2 (00:00) **Tea Bag Crisis** - Opening hook: no safe tea bags exist, big companies know the plastic problem and don't care
- 3 (01:47) **Origin Story: Father's Cancer Diagnosis** - Josephine's entry into wellness began at 14-15 when her father was diagnosed with colorectal cancer
- 4 (04:15) **Microplastics and the Fertility Crisis** - Explains why plastic exposure is critical for women experiencing unexplained infertility
- 5 (05:38) **What Are Microplastics and Nanoplastics?** - Defines the particles and lists major exposure sources
- 6 (09:16) **Tea Bags: The Biggest Offender** - McGill University study reveals 11.6 billion microplastics and 3.4 billion nanoplastics per tea bag
- 7 (12:18) **How Plastics Prevent Weight Loss** - Three mechanisms explain why microplastics make weight loss difficult
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Beyoncé, Madonna, and Kendall Jenner trust her research and she says the tea industry is one of the most diabolical when it comes to plastic and lead exposure.
Josephine Musco, environmental health researcher, Vogue and Forbes contributor, and founder of Olyxir, has spent years studying how toxins infiltrate the body. Today, she's exposing the microplastics hiding in your tea, the skincare you're overpaying for, and the hormonal disruption happening every time you think you're taking care of yourself.
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Our Guest:
Josephine Musco
Josephine's Links:
Olyxir Website *Available in Target*
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