(WISH) — Microplastics, tiny pieces of plastic found in the sea, air, and now human bodies, are raising global health concerns.

A new study reveals that the average person consumes between 74,000 to 121,000 microplastic particles annually, which can harm multiple bodily systems and are linked to serious health conditions.

Jennifer Adibi, an epidemiologist with a Doctor of Science degree, said, “We are learning more and more as the generations go along.”

Microplastics have been linked to health issues such as cancer, Parkinson’s, and dementia. They can harm the digestive, respiratory, endocrine, reproductive, and immune systems.

Research from Boston University found that bacteria exposed to microplastics can become resistant to several types of antibiotics, as the plastics provide surfaces for bacteria to attach to.

To reduce exposure to microplastics, experts recommend avoiding single-use plastics such as water bottles, straws, and shopping bags, and using alternatives like glass containers for heating food.

Adibi advises against using plastic cutting boards, suggesting wood, glass, or steel as safer options.

This story is from a script aired on WISH-TV. This story was formatted for WISHTV.com using AI-assisted tools. Our editorial team reviews and edits all content published to ensure it meets our journalistic standards for accuracy and fairness. Health Spotlight is presented by Community Health Network.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A youth program offers middle and high school students the opportunity to redesign Indiana Avenue while honoring its rich cultural legacy.

The initiative, led by Next Great Architects, is hosting its fourth annual summer design charrette, a weeklong design camp that empowers youth to blend creativity with community impact. The program focuses on the historical significance of Indiana Avenue, once a thriving hub of Black culture, and provides students with the tools to envision its future.

“Architecture impacts everyone’s lives. But not everyone understands that it’s an option for a career,” said Kionna Walker, architect educator and founder of Next Great Architects. “Most people who do pursue architecture are people already connected to the profession through family, friends, or people they’ve already known.”

Walker said students are developing essential skills throughout the process, including public speaking, confidence-building, critical thinking, collaboration, problem-solving, and creativity.

For students Bailey Johnson, a freshman at Ball State University, the experience offers a glimpse into a potential career in architecture. “Hopefully, we get to work more hands-on on creating our vision of Indiana Avenue while keeping its history behind it.”

This year’s charrette is supported by new partners, including Purdue University, which enhances the program’s reach and resources. Eunice Trotter, director of the Indiana Landmarks Black Heritage Preservation Program, emphasized the importance of understanding the area’s history. “For these young people to learn about that history, they begin to embrace and see the foundation upon which our lives were built today.”

The student showcase will happen Friday, featuring a special presentation from a recent Ball State University graduate whose thesis project focuses on reviving Indiana Avenue.

For many young designers participating in the charrette, this week marks the beginning of their blueprint for the future, as they learn to merge historical appreciation with innovative design.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Former Indianapolis Colts center Ryan Kelly may not be playing for the Colts anymore, but he’s still making an impact in the Circle City.

“The beautiful gift of life of having children,” Kelly said. “If there’s a significant way – and we’ve proven, Count the Kicks has – to help alleviate pain or to eliminate stillbirths.”

Kelly, along with volunteers at Elevance Health, packed fuzzy socks, bracelets and much more into a thousand bags on Thursday, July 10, that were then sent to expectant moms.

Elevance Health Cares Executive Director Taylor Rhodes told News 8 Sports’ Andrew Chernoff that Kelly and his wife Emma are always willing to volunteer when asked by Elevance Health to help with events.

“They are such wonderful people to work with,” Rhodes said.

The Kelly family experienced tragedy in 2021 when Emma had complications 19 weeks into her pregnancy, which ultimately ended the life of their daughter Mary Kate. At the hospital, Emma said she learned that her daughter’s heart stopped.

“I was told there was no other choice but to deliver our baby next,” Emma Kelly wrote on Instagram at the time. “Ryan and I spent almost 48 hours in the hospital.”

Then in 2023, the couple had twin boys, Duke and Ford, just 27 weeks into pregnancy

“She (Emma) felt something different, went to the hospital and sure enough, there they are, in the NICU for three months,” Ryan Kelly said. “Now they’re – can report – that they’re two years old and they’re doing great. And they’re the happiest guys in the world.”

Since then, the Kelly’s have added another daughter to their family after Stella was born just last year.

The Kelly family continues to be big advocates for Count the Kicks, an “an evidence-based program that teaches expectant parents about the importance of tracking fetal movements.”

“This is so near and dear because of our story because we know what it’s like to walk out of the hospital with empty arms when you should have your baby,” Emma Kelly said. “So, it’s our mission hopefully so that no one else has to walk out with those empty arms.”

The work Ryan Kelly has done to help women and babies during pregnancy has helped him become an Elevance Health Champion. Previous athletes who have been named an Elevance Health Champion include Michael Phelps and Tamika Catchings.

“We’ve always kind of searched for our avenue as far as how we give back, and I think we’ve found it through our loss of Mary Kate, through finding Count the Kicks,” Ryan Kelly said.

It’s a cause that continues to be personal for the Kelly’s.

“Now that we know there are ways to save babies, we want to help save as much as we can,” Emma Kelly said.

Ryan Kelly signed with Minnesota Vikings this offseason after spending the last nine seasons with the Colts.

He, along with Emma, hosted a community baby shower this past November in Indianapolis.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A state senator on Monday said turning the downtown Indianapolis Mile Square over to the state would improve safety both within and outside its boundaries.

Sen. Michael Young, R-Indianapolis, told News 8 he was already working on a proposal to put the Mile Square under state control when seven teens were shot, two of them fatally, shortly after midnight on July 5. He said the city’s recent homicide totals are unacceptable.

“Our No. 1 job as elected officials, no matter where we serve, is the protection of our citizens. It’s public safety,” he said.

Young said he is drafting legislation to carve the Mile Square, which is bounded by North, South, East and West streets, out of the Indianapolis city government. The Mile Square is home to the state government complex, the Indiana War Memorial and Monument Circle, as well as Circle Centre Mall and Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Under his proposal, Young said, the governor would appoint a commissioner for the Mile Square along with one member of a five-member council. The House and Senate would appoint two council members each. Young said Mile Square residents could vote on whether to retain those council members in a manner similar to judicial retention elections.

Young said his plan would free up Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers for patrol duties elsewhere by making the Indiana State Police the primary law enforcement agency responsible for securing the Mile Square. The attorney general would be responsible for prosecuting any crimes there. Young said the state police already has a substantial presence in the area due to the state government complex. Fire protection would come from the existing Indianapolis Fire Department Station 13, which he said could be transferred to Indiana Department of Homeland Security control, for example.

Young said the Mile Square already generates tax revenue through a combination of property taxes, food and beverage taxes, hotel taxes and rental taxes, so he expects the district could pay for itself.

“It won’t cost the city any money, they won’t lose it. Actually, they’ll be able to do better because they’ll have less duties to perform and they can move them outside to the townships to perform those. We won’t have to take any money out of the budget to do it and we won’t have to have anyone outside of the Mile Square actually have to pay for it.”

Democratic Mayor Joe Hogsett’s office did not respond to News 8’s request for comment. Senate Democrats said they were unable to provide any comment.

Young said he plans to formally file the necessary legislation when state lawmakers return in January. He said he’s still working on the language and plans to meet with the governor’s office, the attorney general’s office and the courts in the coming days to figure out the particulars.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Indiana Fever All-Star Caitlin Clark is officially out for Tuesday’s game against the New York Liberty.

Clark was listed as out due to a right groin injury on the team’s pregame injury report Monday evening.

Clark was at practice Monday watching from the sidelines. Head coach Stephanie White said Clark met with doctors after practice for more evaluation and will still travel with the team to New York.

In the meantime, the rest of the Fever roster is focused on starting off the second half of the season on the right foot, even though Clark can’t play.

“We know this season’s not gonna be perfect. Everyone’s not always going to be healthy at the same time, and that’s kind of how its been for us this season,” Fever center Aliyah Boston said. “So for us, it’s about not getting down and not letting it hold us down, but make sure that the next person up and the next person to step on that floor is ready to go.”

Fellow All-Star Kelsey Mitchell reiterated that every game from this point on matters. Whether Clark is healthy or not, she said the Fever have to be gritty and get as many wins to push for the playoffs.

“I wanna win,” Mitchell said. “Unfortunately, (Clark) will not be around, but you have to want to win regardless. You look at these situations like it’s unfortunate, but we have to keep playing for her and make sure that she knows we miss her, but we have do right by ourselves.”

White is confident her team has what it takes to have a positive second half of the season.

“We know what it’s going to take,” White said. “We’ve got to be able to do that on a daily basis. We’ve got to continue to grow. We’ve got to understand that there’s gonna be disruption, and we’ve got to be able to handle that, which I think they’ve done a good job of. We’ve got to be able to start putting some things together.”

The Fever play the Liberty at 8 p.m. Eastern Tuesday night in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (WISH) — Artificial intelligence is being used to diagnose autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder with a simple test at Indiana University.

The test the researchers created is as simple as monitoring arm movements to touch a computer screen.

To do the test, participants first have to put on a sensor that tracks the precise movements of the hand before it starts tapping dots on the screen that disappear and reappear every few seconds “This happens about 120 times,” said Chaundy Mckeever, an IU graduate student working on the research team.

Each touch produces spikey-looking data, Mckeever said, pointing at a screen-filled data point. “This would be the forward motion. This is when you’re making contact with the screen, and this is moving backward again.”

The researchers told I-Team 8 that everyone’s movements are random. Dr. Jorge Jose, the James H. Rudy distinguished professor of physics at Indiana University, said, “The real surprise is that the randomness in people that have autism, ADHD, or the co-morbid of the two things is totally different from people that are called neurotypical. The ones that don’t have this neurodevelopmental disorder.”

They’ve been working on this research since 2013, but using artificial intelligence has been a game changer for them. Jose said, “First, train the system to be able to test completely new participants, new subjects and can tell you with 86% accuracy. This is done in about 15 minutes.”

The system is a lot quicker than a psychiatrist or psychologist doing it. “It takes them from 10 to 12 hours to diagnose a new subject,” Jose said.

The test doesn’t work with every child. Mckeever said, “Some children are too young, or really low functioning. Young children with ADHD will not make it through the whole test. They just get bored out of their minds.”

Researchers tell I-Team 8 if a child can’t complete the test that can be a diagnosis in and of itself.

Now that their research is published in Nature, a peer reviewed scientific journal, they will be looking for more funding to expand the study with the ultimate goal of getting the test approved for widespread use.
“We think this can be done in elementary schools,” said Dr. Jose.

(AP) — The Trump administration has released records of the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr., despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate’s family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination.

The digital document dump includes more than 240,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration.

In a lengthy statement released Monday, King’s two living children, Martin III, 67, and Bernice, 62, said their father’s assassination has been a “captivating public curiosity for decades.” But the pair emphasized the personal nature of the matter, urging that “these files must be viewed within their full historical context.”

The Kings got advance access to the records and had their own teams reviewing them. Those efforts continued even as the government granted public access. It was not immediately clear Monday whether the documents would shed any new light on King’s life, the Civil Rights Movement or his murder.

“As the children of Dr. King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, his tragic death has been an intensely personal grief — a devastating loss for his wife, children, and the granddaughter he never met — an absence our family has endured for over 57 years,” they wrote. “We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief.”

They also repeated the family’s long-held contention that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of assassinating King, was not solely responsible, if at all.

Bernice King was 5-years old when her father was killed. Martin III was 10.

A statement from the office of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called the disclosure “unprecedented” and said many of the records had been digitized for the first time to make it possible. She praised President Donald Trump for pushing the issue.

Release is ‘transparency’ to some, a ‘distraction’ for others

Trump promised as a candidate to release files related to President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination. When Trump took office in January, he signed an executive order to declassify the JFK records, along with those associated with Robert F. Kennedy’s and King’s 1968 assassinations.

The government unsealed the JFK records in March and disclosed some RFK files in April.

The announcement from Gabbard’s office included a statement from Alveda King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece, who is an outspoken conservative and has broken from King’s children on various topics — including the FBI files. Alveda King said she was “grateful to President Trump” for his “transparency.”

Separately Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s social media account featured a picture of the attorney general with Alveda King in her office.

Besides fulfilling Trump’s executive order, the latest release serves as another alternative headline for the president as he tries to mollify supporters angry over his administration’s handling of records concerning the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself behind bars while awaiting trial in 2019, during Trump’s first presidency. Trump last Friday ordered the Justice Department to release grand jury testimony but stopped short of unsealing the entire case file.

Bernice King and Martin Luther King III did not mention Trump in their statement Monday.

Some civil rights activists were not so sparing.

“Trump releasing the MLK assassination files is not about transparency or justice,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton. “It’s a desperate attempt to distract people from the firestorm engulfing Trump over the Epstein files and the public unraveling of his credibility among the MAGA base.”

Records mean a new trove of research material

The King records were initially intended to be sealed until 2027, until Justice Department attorneys asked a federal judge to lift the sealing order ahead of its expiration date.

Scholars, history buffs and journalists have been preparing to study the documents to find new information about his assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King co-founded in 1957 as the Civil Rights Movement blossomed, opposed the release. They, along with King’s family, argued that the FBI illegally surveilled King and other civil rights figures, tapping their offices and phone lines with the aim of discrediting them and their movement.

It has long been established that then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was intensely interested if not obsessed with King and others that he considered radicals. FBI records released previously show how Hoover’s bureau wiretapped King’s telephone lines, bugged his hotel rooms and used informants to get information against him.

“He was relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),” the King children said in their statement.

“The intent of the government’s COINTELPRO campaign was not only to monitor, but to discredit, dismantle and destroy Dr. King’s reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement,” they continued. “These actions were not only invasions of privacy, but intentional assaults on the truth — undermining the dignity and freedoms of private citizens who fought for justice, designed to neutralize those who dared to challenge the status quo.”

The Kings said they “support transparency and historical accountability” but “object to any attacks on our father’s legacy or attempts to weaponize it to spread falsehoods.”

Opposition to King intensified even after the Civil Rights Movement compelled Congress and President Lyndon B. Johnson to enact the Civil Right Act of 1964 and the Voting Right Act of 1965. After those landmark victories, King turned much of his attention to economic justice and international peace. He was an outspoken critic of rapacious capitalism and the Vietnam War. King argued that political rights alone were not enough in an uneven economy. Many establishment figures like Hoover viewed King as a communist threat.

King’s children still don’t accept the original explanation of assassination

King was assassinated as he was aiding striking sanitation workers in Memphis, part of his explicit turn toward economic justice.

Ray plead guilty to assassinating King. He later renounced that plea and maintained his innocence until his death in 1998.

Members of King’s family, and others, have long questioned whether Ray acted alone, or if he was even involved. Coretta Scott King for the probe to be reopened, and in 1998, then-Attorney General Janet Reno directed the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department to take a new look. The Justice Department said it “found nothing to disturb the 1969 judicial determination that James Earl Ray murdered Dr. King.”

In their latest statement, Bernice King and Martin Luther King III repeated their assertions that Ray was set up, pointing to a 1999 civil case in which a Memphis jury in a wrongful death case concluded that Martin Luther King Jr. had been the target of a conspiracy.

“As we review these newly released files,” the Kings said, “we will assess whether they offer additional insights beyond the findings our family has already accepted.”

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — We’re coming off of a wet weekend at times with some areas receiving 2-4″+ of rainfall. Now, our attention turns toward suffering through a sweltering combination of heat and humidity that gives way to dangerous heat indices by midweek.

Monday night: A cooler, partly cloudy, and dry night is ahead with lows in the mid 60s.

Tuesday: Warmer, but slightly less humid, for Tuesday with plenty of sunshine and no rain in sight. Highs in the upper 80s.

Wednesday: We really start to see the heater rear its ugly head Wednesday as a hot dome locks in further than it has in recent days. Highs will soar into the low 90s with some spots possibly hitting the mid 90s. Dew point values in the mid 70s will make for a swampy air mass that yields triple digit peak heat indices.

7-Day Forecast: Worst of the heat and feels like temps occurs Thursday with some areas possibly pushing closer to a 110 degree heat index…yuck. Heat stress levels will also be at their highest in the major category Thursday and Friday. Beginning Friday and heading into the final weekend of July, we’ll see this hot dome break down enough to increase rain/storm chances and lower highs into the upper 80s. It isn’t going to save us from the awful humidity though.