You can filter your tap water; there are various ways to do so. I’m sorry your water is contaminated. That’s awful.
I wouldn’t always assume the worst with the cows milk and butter. There is a wide range of product and conditions out there.
Certain kinds of plastics and applications are known to leach chemicals far worse than others. Frozen peas in plastic? It’s minimal. Food pouches for kids? Awful - it’s liquid that’s heated in the plastic to pasteurize it.
You can get olive oil in glass very easily. It’s usually the default. I order from the Napa valley olive oil company in bulk - glass jars with high quality oil that used to be excellent value. They’ve gone up in price but still decent value compared to the market.
Analysis of microplastics in commercial vegetable edible oils from Italy and Spain - 2024
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03088...
• MPs were detected in all samples which were stocked in both PET and glass bottles.
> You can at best mitigate it by being proactive and wealthy enough but it's still not enough.
Even with your example of free pollutant olive oil, it's easy to find studies that it is in fact contaminated.
I'm sure it's rather limited, but the point remains that pollution is inevitable nowadays.
I worked in building construction, we learned at formation that because of the asbestos used in construction all over the country there is now asbestos fiber in the air absolutely everywhere. Again, it's maybe 1 fiber per liter in middle of countryside, but still...
Pollution is rather recent, it's been only 200 years we pollute so much and the fact is its effects are increasing very fast.
Now I know that yet I drink water exclusively from plastic bottle, because ground water is contaminated with pesticides here. So it's either micro plastic in the water or pesticide, choose your poison.
Because I don't use Teflon (plastic) covered pan, I need more oil to avoid food to stick to the pan. The oil comes in plastic bottle, category 1, that are known to transmit pollutants to liquids and especially oils because they're fat.
I choose to go with butter then, so I can avoid the plastic bottle. Every butter comes in a soft plastic coating that definitely doesn't look natural. Didn't search internet for it but pretty sure it is also plastic and it exchange pollutants with the butter.
Not even speaking about the cow milk used to make butter and it's different contaminants, mainly pesticide residues, metals, mycotoxins, hormones, and others reaching the cow through feeding or drug administration by producers.
My rant could go on forever, the point is that plastic and pollution is absolutely everywhere. You can at best mitigate it by being proactive and wealthy enough but it's still not enough.
Even if you buy good quality food from non pollutated area, you don't really know if it hasn't been tampered with. Findus sold beef lasagna that were made with Romanian rotten horse meat..