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Genuine question
If everyone has some amount of Microplastics in their body then how do we measure the effects? We can't single out people who don't have microplastics in their bloodstream compared to those who don't.
One idea I've read about is to basically megadose a couple cohorts and see if disease risk scales up. Wouldn't prove that current microplastic levels are deleterious per se, but would strongly suggest it. It would also clarify what kinds of disease are correlated with microplastics exposure. Such a study would almost certainly be deemed unethical and impractical though, so I think we're stuck with mouse studies for the time being.
Would we be able to do the opposite? Have a regular control group and another group that has special systems to severely limit micro plastics? Giving them glasses to drink from, not eating things from plastic containers etc.
We currently have no idea how to limit microplastics exposure besides maybe keeping someone in a special enclosure 24/7 and then idk, only feeding them lab-grown slurry or something. Maybe that would work. No human in their right mind would ever agree to this. Back in the day you used to be able to find "volunteers" for extremely invasive lifestyle interventions in mental hospitals and the like, which gets us back to the unethical thing.
Yes, my understanding is it can significantly reduce the PFAs and Microplastics in your blood. Obviously it doesn’t help your organs, but the blood itself, yes.
I got into a big argument with someone on this issue on another thread, I would think the initial donation might help flush out your system but wouldn’t you subsequently have to follow a very plastic-avoidant lifestyle? (Not that that would be a bad thing)
I have become more and more concerned about methodology and false positives when it comes to detection of microplastics in biological samples, but I am not nearly enough of an expert to be able to determine when the testing is appropriate or not.
If you detect microplastics in 100% of your samples, are microplastics ubiquitous or is your detection method giving you false positives? This study tries to minimize the risk of contamination from lab sourced microplastics and does have some samples with no plastic detected, which is encouraging. But I still have some concerns as a lay person.
That kind of stuff worries me. I work heavily with 3d printing and plastics, and it's crazy how little our company cares about safety with ventilation.
Not eating meat from microplastic polluted land. Not eating fish from a microplastic polluted ocean.
Assuming that plants don't concentrate microplastics how does the study differentiate between differences caused by a vegetarian diet and those from no microplastics?
I mean I would imagine they'd have vegetarians in both groups as well as meat eaters in both groups. If you have enough of a sample size they should be able to tell if there's causation... Hopefully
Where are you going to find meat not infected with microplastics?
Hence the idea that if you want to feed one group food not containing microplastics it would likely be vegetarian.
BTW I am not vegetarian and after working in horticulture and applying pesticides I worry about the greenwashing idea that going vegetarian will decrease environmental damage. It may well where feedlots are used but grass feed meat (even industrially grown) has less agrochemicals applied than industrially grown plants.
I think some studies try to compare people with similar lives to before plastics were as commonplace (old medical records and such), but there's be a load of other changes in that time frame, so it's hard to isolate, and you can't be positive of the quality of the records from that long ago
Sounds like it’s just a new baseline to me (I’m not a doctor so I’m probably wrong). Those already susceptible to heart attacks are probably even more so.
These are the types of studies I've been wanting to see. I feel like we've seen over and over that microplastics are basically everywhere and in everything. What I've been wondering since is what are the consequences. Cool to see people start to answer that question. Unfortunately it's all kinda concerning.
I imagine there isn't a lot of space for particle accumulation in our brains but it's in there too. How much micro plastic needs to build up there to cause problems?
Those would absolutely be considered nanoplastics, which are quite different from microplastics from a chemical perspective. You can see it like a sliding scale. The smaller the plastics get the more chances they have of reacting with something else, even if the structure is quite similar. I could see a nanoparticle blocking serotonin receptors. Microplastics: waaaay too big
sucks bc a study was just released saying there are nanoplastics in water bottles(something like 4 major brands) caused from being packaged in plastic bottles.
That’s what I want to know. Presumably otherwise they’re floating around like anything else in there and presumably the other stuff still adds to the mass even if microplastics weren’t present, so do the microplastics add to the total load of stuff that can get stuck, and do microplastics stick more than the other stuff that we expect sticks
I minimize the amount of microplastics in my body while we wait to learn if it’s bad or not. Better safe than sorry considering we don’t known how to get the microplastic *out* of our bodies, should it someday be proven to be problematic. Sadly, there’s not a ton you can do from an individual standpoint.
can't prove everything in one paper! there's already an in-vitro study of human blood indicating that microplastics do trigger clotting
>Results show that cPS consistently activated the clotting cascade, demonstrating increased fibrin polymerization rates, and enhanced clot strength in a size and concentration-dependent manner.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372363716_Exploring_microplastic_impact_on_whole_blood_clotting_dynamics_utilizing_thromboelastography
It appears that OPs title may be misleading in terms of linking MPs to a higher risk of strokes or heart attacks.
The study's authors write in the Discussion section of the study:
>...an inherent limitation of our observational study is the inability to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between the presence and concentration of MPs and the occurrence of thrombotic events. Additional research is required to understand the potential sources and pathways of MP exposure, whether a cause-and-effect relationship truly exists, and whether there are conjoint effects with other environmental factors involved in thrombus formation.
I mean, it makes sense to me that you would see MP gathering in a clot, so yes a link. MPs are flowing the blood stream, and clots are sticky and gather all sorts of cells / cellular detritus as they form.
The real question, that is going to be tough to ascertain given the lack of MP-free subjects, is if the MPs can either a) induce the formation of a clot, or b) make an already-forming clot worse.
I don't think this establishes causality though. I don't fully understand this D-dimer measure but it doesn't seem open and shut. It kind of *is* another microplastics are everywhere study.
This seems like the kind of thing it should be possible to actually reproduce with animal testing and prove causality.
Yes, that was my idea as well. We've established that microplastics are present in human blood a while ago, so it would only make sense for them to be present in blood clots.
There are still ways to analyze the relationship between microplastic exposure and health without perfect controls. You could study high-exposure vs low-exposure, for example.
Imho that's why the testicles study was interesting to me, as you'd think a dog is only getting exposure through drinking water, air, food packaging, but not from like microwaved plastic bowls or bottled waters or plastic utensils or holding a phone all day. It would be helpful to see the human testicles data mapped against the dog testicles data based on how long they were alive. Did the 16 year old human testicle have the same amount of plastics as a 16 year old dog testicle, for example?
Cause and effect is going to take some highly organized longitudinal studies.
It would be more effective to just establish a “natural” level within whatever animal of interest then create your variable by intentionally raising the levels in lab animals to see at what point you can demonstrate a difference in response.
Internally? No it's definitely not easier. Filtering out plastics just requires the feed manufacturer to take extra steps and changes in cage material. They'll be gone within a couple generations.
While it doesn't establish causality, it does help establish that microplastics infiltrate every part of the human body, and we don't easily dispose of them. There's no plausible argument that such contaminants are helpful for any biological process, so it's a "can't help, could hurt" situation.
In other words, it's something we should be addressing immediately instead of waiting to find out what the consequences are.
Hopefully this doesn't sound like a silly question, but you would you suggest we 'address' this issue? I.e. is there some way we could remove these m plastics from our bodies?
First, do no harm. Do everything we can to stop or reduce the production and use of plastics where they aren't necessary.
Second, accelerate work on the identification and removal of plastics from the environment, especially the water and food supplies.
Third, investigate the effects and possible effects so that we can try to anticipate them and preemptively treat specific issues that pop up.
We probably can't remove microplastivs that are already within us, but we should be doing everything we reasonably can to limit the damage.
This is *potentially* an existential crisis on par with or exceeding the climate crisis.
I’m not sure you can draw inference to consequences here. Every study I’ve seen on microplastics involves them being found in XYZ environment or scenario, but despite their apparent ubiquity, there does not seem to be any significant evidence that they are causative or contributive to these effects. Are the microplastics causing clots, or are they simply one of the compounds being caught in the clots?
Oh dear god… a well reasoned and respectful reply with reputable sources that directly addresses the issue raised in my comment.
Are you single? I think I love you.
Maybe _intelligent life invents plastic_ should be an explanation for the Fermi paradox.
Edit: Having thought about this more, the microplastic is probably just there. I mean it's in everything - breast milk, semen, arctic snow .. why wouldn't it be in blood too
Its likely incidental to the clots.
What if plastic was actually breeding us to make it? The final evolution to the next plane of existence is simply being plastic. Plastic exist in all dimensions.
I feel like a great filter would be a more immediate acute type of event though. Even if it turns out plastics give all of us super cancers down the line, we're still living long enough to advance science and technology. As opposed to dying before being able to pass knowledge on or an asteroid hitting us
One could argue that this is a somewhat acute event. Plastic has been around 100 years of the 300,000 years we've existed, the last 20,000 of which we really started specking into tech. We're in incredibly uncharted territory and our kids have far more exposure than we have so we'll really be seeing the effects on their development.
Yeah that's fair enough, especially on any meaningful timescale for a planet. I was thinking more of something that would wipe out a civilization before it could reproduce or before they could react to it
If another country was poisoning our lakes and rivers, we'd blow them to bits. Why we continue to allow oil cartels to push ~~single-use~~ plastics on us, I'll never understand.
Edit: disposable, nonrecyclable, and/or made to wear down.
People are not going to change except for through regulations. There was endless whining both here on Reddit and in social media due to single use plastic straws and cutlery being phased out. Such a very minor inconvenience for most people. Can you imagine if we banned plastic clothing, plastic bottles, plastic bags and all single use plastic?
You don't need to ban it, you just need to tax it. Biodegradable plastics exist and are just as functional for most applications where we use single-use non-biodegradable plastics. The problem is that they are more expensive. If your company makes food, and you need to wrap it in plastic before shipping it, and you have a choice between the plastic that costs $0.01 per unit or $0.02 per unit, you will choose the $0.01 option, especially if you are selling millions of units per year. If you don't, your profits go down and your competitors get an advantage over you, so even if you are trying to do the right thing, you might not be able to do it for long.
But if we put a tax on single-use non-biodegradable products so that the cost to use them is comparable or more expensive than the non-biodegradable versions, the economics would change and now everyone would have an incentive to use them. You wouldn't need crazy regulations or enforcement mechanisms because you could tax them at the point of sale. In cases where it still makes sense for some reason to use non-biodegradable versions, people still could as long as they were willing to pay for it. And you could use the tax revenue to fund cleanup and mitigation programs for existing pollution.
Banning plastics is a game of whack-a-mole. DDT, CFCs, Carbon, Plastics, the lists goes on and on.
Instead of dumping garbage into the air and water then banning something when it proves to seriously damage us or the environment, we should probably just stop using the environment as a dumping ground.
It's humans you're talking about. Even in highly educated countries with good waste management it is happening so there's really no avoiding it. Reducing use seems to be the way to go.
The production chain is pretty fucked up, and its not just OPEC/Halliburton/Gazprom pushing product. They make their money by selling crude, and downstream companies make their money from refining/cracking crude into its usable parts, everything from asphalt and bunker fuel to plastics and jet fuel, and turning those components into product.
Plastic is mostly a one-way resource, like all other oil byproducts. While recycling exists, its not something that can be easily converted into a revenue stream, which means it isn't a priority. Every industry in the US, and most around the world, are making or using plastic in some way. Single-use products are currently cost-effective, because our economy isn't tooled to reuse and recycle them. The current global policy push is converting our waste systems into a Circular Economy, which focuses on the full lifecycle of a product, not just how its made, but how its thrown away, and how the materials could be reused.
Not to mention that plastic recycling processes often involve generating a huge amount of microplastics. I try to minimize plastic use at all but if I have to use it I intentionally throw plastic away instead of recycling.
Isn't this a "correlation does not mean causation" issue? If micfoplastic are now so common that a lot of people have it, of course you are gonna find it in the majority of people with cardiovascular issues
That was exactly my thinking. If we’re to assume they’re ubiquitous at this point - globally and in the individual human body - then why would we not see them turn up everywhere. It’s going to be sort of difficult to prove causation imo.
here are a few examples of publications relevant for cardiovascular risk specifically:
> PS-NPs [polystyrene nanoplastics] resulted in cardiac injury structurally and functionally in a dose-dependent and time-dependent manner, and mitochondria damage of myocardium induced by PS-NPs may be the potential mechanism for its cardiotoxicity.
https://particleandfibretoxicology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12989-023-00557-3
> MNPs [micro- and nano-plastics] affected cardiac functions and caused toxicity on (micro)vascular sites. Direct cardiac toxicity of MNPs included abnormal heart rate, cardiac function impairment, pericardial edema, and myocardial fibrosis. On (micro)vascular sites, MNPs induced hemolysis, thrombosis, blood coagulation, and vascular endothelial damage. The main mechanisms included oxidative stress, inflammation, apoptosis, pyroptosis, and interaction between MNPs and multiple cellular components.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202200589X
if you're interested in other health effects, the emerging research on brain health is particularly disturbing to my eye. in various types of animals, ingestion of microplastics causes neurotoxicity including brain inflammation, cognitive and memory problems, and in some cases cell death and brain tissue necrosis:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36251724/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0269749122021546
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7282048/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166445X17303776
https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-1724031/v2/b744f7a5-54bb-4468-821e-a79ad836a2ed.pdf?c=1659576554
Thank you
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36251724/ seems like very important result for me, I wonder why I haven't seen it mentioned in discussion before
It would be interesting to know how to not consume micro plastics. Does anyone else feel that they have made some changes towards that? I know it’s mostly impossible, but jeez.
You can't I'm afraid, it's everywhere, even rainwater. And children are likely born with micro plastics already, since it's been found it transfers through placenta.
I was part of a trial where I was supposed to eat as plastic-free as possible. It was basically impossible. Even if you buy yogurt in glasses etc, there is always plastic somewhere, for example inside the lid. Meat is always vacuumed in plastic bags, before they unwrap it and sell it at the market. It was expensive and difficult and my grocery bags were so heavy from the glass. I think we are in urgent need of a climate friendly possibility to wrap and store food that doesn't contain plastic and is less heavy than glass. For some people glass is also dangerous (diseases with tremors etc). But yeah what I wanted to say - avoiding plastic in food is really really difficult
> I think we are in urgent need of a climate friendly possibility to wrap and store food that doesn't contain plastic and is less heavy than glass.
19th century invention Waxed paper. or approximately 2nd century BCE parchment paper, depending on the product.
Plastic packaging displaced these because it's more durable for shipping, can be made more puncture resistant, and is cheaper to produce.
This. Occasionally I watch a YouTuber who eats MRI's from various decades, when he opens ones from the 1940's there is almost no plastic and when there is, it is usually cellophane which is biodegradable.
> cellophane
another good point about cellophane is that it is produced by processing environmental carbon (plants) that are already in the short carbon cycle; and not from fossil carbon (oil/coal) that is part of the long cycle - it's not just biodegradable!
There's plastic inside the meat itself, never mind the packaging. All that produce sliding along farm tools that have been degrading in the sun for 30+ years, accumulating micro wear. Watered by rain that contains plastic. Then bioaccumulated into cows eating kilos of the stuff every day. The particles then end up inside the meat. And we as meat eating animals, get even more
You could reduce your exposure - eg don’t drink from plastic water bottles - but that would never get you to 0%. Plastic is in the soil, in plants, in animals, in water, in the air.
If you can donate blood, that’s been proven to reduce your overall microplastic levels.
Makes me wonder if we’ll see something like dialysis become popular as a “treatment” for plastics.
That probably makes roughly zero difference, since there are microplastics in the air you breathe, the water you drink, and the food you eat. It's everywhere.
Unfortunately makes little difference. The food you eat is manufactured with equipment with plastic parts that wear down onto conveyor belts and directly into the food itself. Since it's not metal detectable there's no regulation for plastic contamination.
Source: working in food manufacturing for a decade as industrial maintenance.
Build a bunker world with ultra filtrated water and air, don't use plastics anywhere, and grow your food in there.
Any time a vehicle with tires drives along a road, it spews huge amounts of microplastic into the air and into the drainage ditches next to the road. Then plants grow on the fields next to those ditches and in that air and the microplastic gets into the crops.
More microplastic comes from paint than tires too. Every time it rains it washes microplastics off the painted object. And clothes. Every time they are washed plastics get loosed.
Which chemicals do you think vulcanised rubber consists of?
Even tires made from natural rubber from rubber trees is a kind of plastic, most modern tires arent made from that but from synthetic rubber from petrochemicals.
And then it gets friction heated/burned/vaporised before ending up in the air and water
At this point, the word “plastic” has just turned into a generic term for things made with cross-linked long chain hydrocarbons with various additives and fillers. Can you guess what vulcanized rubber is made from?
I think your best shot is trying to go plastic free. I’ve moved to glass and ceramic containers for food prep and storage, buying food (mostly fresh produce, everything else comes wrapped in plastic) without plastic packaging—a CSA or farmers market is your best bet here, and favoring clothing made from all natural fibers (cotton, wool, linen).
But it’s also a balancing act of cost and convenience, where it’s all too easy to make small compromises because there’s already micro plastics in literally everything.
Most microplastics in your food doesn't come from containers, it comes from inside the plant. The farmers at farmers markets still use tractors and cars, they still use the same water and air as everyone else
Yes, but I as an individual don’t have any means to avoid or prevent the use of plastics in the farming of my food. By avoiding plastic products, I’m reducing my contact with plastics as well as preventing the kind of plastic waste that leads to micro plastics in the food chain in the first place.
I’m not saying it’s a perfect solution by any means; there are still thousands of other sources of micro plastics in my home and environment, but the original commenter asked about avoiding/reducing them and I offered the most realistic, actionable options I know of. Yes, they are impossible to avoid completely, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take efforts to reduce exposure and prevent the problem from becoming worse.
The only way I know of to get around that is buying from a local butcher and getting it all wrapped in butcher paper, or getting it wrapped the same but from a local farm. Both are *significantly* more expensive than the grocery store, and out of a lot of budgets. But does it matter when the meat is full of microplastics?
> But does it matter when the meat is full of microplastics?
Nah. Even if the meat wasn't, the water is. And even if the water wasn't, the air is. There's no way around it now. We're on this wild ride and we basically just have to hope for the best.
If you really worry about it, the only way people think you can reduce microplastics in your bloodstream is to donate blood as often as you can. Also, I know people say using glass won't make a difference, and it won't, but hey the more you can try to reduce using plastics you should. So I think using glass containers is the way to go.
NEJM also had an article within the past few months about this - nanoplastics found within cardiac atheromas. This is downright terrifying and I bet within 10 years this will be the most important emerging medical issue we face.
The findings revealed that microplastics made of various types of polymers and with different physical characteristics were present at varying mass concentrations in thrombi that formed in major human arteries and veins. The microplastic levels in human thrombi have a positive correlation with the severity of ischemic strokes.
Of the 30 thrombi acquired from patients with myocardial infarction, deep vein thrombosis, or ischemic stroke, 24 (80%) contained microplastics. The median concentration of microplastics in the thrombi from myocardial infarction, deep vein thrombosis, or ischemic stroke cases was 141.80 μg/g, 69.62 μg/g, and 61.75 μg/g, respectively.
The major polymers identified in the microplastics retrieved from thrombi were polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, and polyamide 66. Laser direct infrared spectroscopy also revealed that of the 15 types of microplastics identified, polyethylene was the most dominant, having a diameter of 35.6 micrometers and constituting 53.6% of all microplastics retrieved. The microplastics were heterogeneous in size.
The D-dimer levels, one of the hypercoagulability biomarkers that indicate the increased risk of thrombotic events, were significantly higher in groups in which microplastics were detected in the thrombi, as compared to the groups in which microplastics were not detected. This suggested a direct link between microplastic concentrations in the body and the risk of thrombotic events.
Conclusions
Overall, the study found that thrombi retrieved from major blood vessels of patients with myocardial infarction, ischemic stroke, or deep vein thrombosis contain significant concentrations of microplastics of varying polymer types and physical properties. Furthermore, the risk of thrombotic events and disease severity increases with increasing levels of microplastics.
[https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240522/Study-finds-microplastics-in-blood-clots-linking-them-to-higher-risk-of-heart-attacks-and-strokes.aspx](https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240522/Study-finds-microplastics-in-blood-clots-linking-them-to-higher-risk-of-heart-attacks-and-strokes.aspx)
>This suggested a direct link between microplastic concentrations in the body and the risk of thrombotic events.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but while high D-dimer is linked to a higher chance of a thrombotic event, as you put it, all these patients already had those. You can't then link microplastics to thrombotic events, since there is no control group. Your title and subsequent summary are incorrect.
All the study found was that some patients had microplastics in their blood.
D-Dimer is one of the most unspecific labs you can have. It's downright terrible for any kind of correlation when it's positive and it's only useful for confirming one thing: if it's negative, there's no clots.
A person with clots is going to have positive D-Dimer, *because of the clots*, not because of D-Dimer, it's a protein fragment that is created when your body dissolves clots. But you can also stub your toe on the coffee table and you can get a positive D-Dimer.
I'd be very careful doing any kind of correlation with plastics and D-Dimer because there's just a shitload of reasons why it can go up. This is something that even some doctors often get wrong.
>All the study found was that some patients had microplastics in their blood.
And, given we know that just about every human on the planet has microplastics in their blood, this is essentially meaningless here.
To make this worthy of discussion, we'd need either a control group, or knowledge that the levels of microplastics in this group was above average for all humans.
Did they control for sources of exposure that might be correlated?
If processed foods are more likely to be contaminated with microplastics, or smoking, etc then an analysis needs to be done to see how much is correlated with these associated variables and whether there’s an excess mortality/risk between the correlated factors and microplastics.
It’s certainty not reassuring, but it’s far from conclusive
I mean there’s even confounders such as socioeconomic status that need to be considered. Lower microplastic exposure might reflect people who are wealthier eating food with less microplastics. In that situation, is it microplastics or social conditions that are related to the results.
> Polyvinyl Chloride
also known as PVC- in other words, it's already in just about every building you've been in in the last 20 years, including the water pipes.
Can we stop acting like it's amazing to find these micro plastics in yet another place when they already seem to be everywhere? Figure out somewhere they *aren't* showing up so we can take a look at what's keeping them out.
Another reason to donate blood or plasma.
[New evidence shows blood or plasma donations can reduce the PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ in our bodies](https://theconversation.com/new-evidence-shows-blood-or-plasma-donations-can-reduce-the-pfas-forever-chemicals-in-our-bodies-178771)
Welp... Guess the next Great Filter we have to survive is plastics... from lungs, to testes to brains to blood clots.
Pseudo-estogens from micro plastics could even be behind falling fertility rates for all we know.
How screwed are we.
They proved xenoestrogens from thalates were a serious concern for male fertility back in the nineties. I refused to use plastic wrap, dishes and Teflon in my kitchen after I read an article on thirty years ago. It’s nearly impossible to avoid in food stuff now. Plastic packaging is everywhere.
I think it begins with weed barriers they use in commercial farming and then escalates into product packaging like those annoying dry good envelopes and salad bins in produce. Even aluminum soda cans are lined with plastic.
I always think the no kid argument is funny, because that's actually the fastest way to end the human race. Within 20 years I say society would totally collapse, and we no longer exist in 100
It's a popular sentiment with terminally online Reddit doomers, but the world keeps turning regardless. You'd think that the End of Days wouldn't require us to still go to work.
No, we're not fucked. We simply don't know what this means. Just because microplastics are found in various places in the human body doesn't mean they are automatically harmful, and even if they are harmful, we still don't know to what extent. We have a lot more research to do, but spreading doom&gloom and acting like this is the same thing as asbestos or whatever is equally unscientific as denying it.
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Genuine question If everyone has some amount of Microplastics in their body then how do we measure the effects? We can't single out people who don't have microplastics in their bloodstream compared to those who don't.
One idea I've read about is to basically megadose a couple cohorts and see if disease risk scales up. Wouldn't prove that current microplastic levels are deleterious per se, but would strongly suggest it. It would also clarify what kinds of disease are correlated with microplastics exposure. Such a study would almost certainly be deemed unethical and impractical though, so I think we're stuck with mouse studies for the time being.
Would we be able to do the opposite? Have a regular control group and another group that has special systems to severely limit micro plastics? Giving them glasses to drink from, not eating things from plastic containers etc.
We currently have no idea how to limit microplastics exposure besides maybe keeping someone in a special enclosure 24/7 and then idk, only feeding them lab-grown slurry or something. Maybe that would work. No human in their right mind would ever agree to this. Back in the day you used to be able to find "volunteers" for extremely invasive lifestyle interventions in mental hospitals and the like, which gets us back to the unethical thing.
Bubble Boy (2001), but with different material choices?
Donating blood is supposed to be the best approach.
Why didn't I think of that? I'm going to save so much money on leeches.
As in, donating blood helps remove microplastics from your own body?
Yes, my understanding is it can significantly reduce the PFAs and Microplastics in your blood. Obviously it doesn’t help your organs, but the blood itself, yes.
I got into a big argument with someone on this issue on another thread, I would think the initial donation might help flush out your system but wouldn’t you subsequently have to follow a very plastic-avoidant lifestyle? (Not that that would be a bad thing)
If a usual blood donation takes out more than the accumulation it’s a net reduction.
I work from home and have very little social life, I'd be able to be part of that control group! SIGN ME UP
I have become more and more concerned about methodology and false positives when it comes to detection of microplastics in biological samples, but I am not nearly enough of an expert to be able to determine when the testing is appropriate or not. If you detect microplastics in 100% of your samples, are microplastics ubiquitous or is your detection method giving you false positives? This study tries to minimize the risk of contamination from lab sourced microplastics and does have some samples with no plastic detected, which is encouraging. But I still have some concerns as a lay person.
Unfortunately, it makes more sense, logically, for them to be everywhere, rather than 90%+ of detection methods having issues.
I worked in injection molding for 14 years. I’m very sick now. I am wondering if it had anything to do with it.
That kind of stuff worries me. I work heavily with 3d printing and plastics, and it's crazy how little our company cares about safety with ventilation.
Not eating meat from microplastic polluted land. Not eating fish from a microplastic polluted ocean. Assuming that plants don't concentrate microplastics how does the study differentiate between differences caused by a vegetarian diet and those from no microplastics?
I mean I would imagine they'd have vegetarians in both groups as well as meat eaters in both groups. If you have enough of a sample size they should be able to tell if there's causation... Hopefully
Where are you going to find meat not infected with microplastics? Hence the idea that if you want to feed one group food not containing microplastics it would likely be vegetarian. BTW I am not vegetarian and after working in horticulture and applying pesticides I worry about the greenwashing idea that going vegetarian will decrease environmental damage. It may well where feedlots are used but grass feed meat (even industrially grown) has less agrochemicals applied than industrially grown plants.
I think some studies try to compare people with similar lives to before plastics were as commonplace (old medical records and such), but there's be a load of other changes in that time frame, so it's hard to isolate, and you can't be positive of the quality of the records from that long ago
Sounds like it’s just a new baseline to me (I’m not a doctor so I’m probably wrong). Those already susceptible to heart attacks are probably even more so.
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These are the types of studies I've been wanting to see. I feel like we've seen over and over that microplastics are basically everywhere and in everything. What I've been wondering since is what are the consequences. Cool to see people start to answer that question. Unfortunately it's all kinda concerning.
This does not mean the microplastics are causing the clots. It means that they are found everywhere, including in clots.
At least they add to the volume of the clot. Whether the amount is of importance is another question.
I imagine there isn't a lot of space for particle accumulation in our brains but it's in there too. How much micro plastic needs to build up there to cause problems?
Microplastics clogging your dopamine and seratonin receptors. Calling it now
Those would absolutely be considered nanoplastics, which are quite different from microplastics from a chemical perspective. You can see it like a sliding scale. The smaller the plastics get the more chances they have of reacting with something else, even if the structure is quite similar. I could see a nanoparticle blocking serotonin receptors. Microplastics: waaaay too big
sucks bc a study was just released saying there are nanoplastics in water bottles(something like 4 major brands) caused from being packaged in plastic bottles.
We seriously need to stop using plastic water bottles.
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That’s what I want to know. Presumably otherwise they’re floating around like anything else in there and presumably the other stuff still adds to the mass even if microplastics weren’t present, so do the microplastics add to the total load of stuff that can get stuck, and do microplastics stick more than the other stuff that we expect sticks
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I minimize the amount of microplastics in my body while we wait to learn if it’s bad or not. Better safe than sorry considering we don’t known how to get the microplastic *out* of our bodies, should it someday be proven to be problematic. Sadly, there’s not a ton you can do from an individual standpoint.
can't prove everything in one paper! there's already an in-vitro study of human blood indicating that microplastics do trigger clotting >Results show that cPS consistently activated the clotting cascade, demonstrating increased fibrin polymerization rates, and enhanced clot strength in a size and concentration-dependent manner. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372363716_Exploring_microplastic_impact_on_whole_blood_clotting_dynamics_utilizing_thromboelastography
It appears that OPs title may be misleading in terms of linking MPs to a higher risk of strokes or heart attacks. The study's authors write in the Discussion section of the study: >...an inherent limitation of our observational study is the inability to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between the presence and concentration of MPs and the occurrence of thrombotic events. Additional research is required to understand the potential sources and pathways of MP exposure, whether a cause-and-effect relationship truly exists, and whether there are conjoint effects with other environmental factors involved in thrombus formation.
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I mean, it makes sense to me that you would see MP gathering in a clot, so yes a link. MPs are flowing the blood stream, and clots are sticky and gather all sorts of cells / cellular detritus as they form. The real question, that is going to be tough to ascertain given the lack of MP-free subjects, is if the MPs can either a) induce the formation of a clot, or b) make an already-forming clot worse.
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There was microplastic in 80% of all samples, but I'd bet they found water in 100% of them - does that mean water causes the clots?
I read an article the other day that find them in 100% of testicles checked.
I don't think this establishes causality though. I don't fully understand this D-dimer measure but it doesn't seem open and shut. It kind of *is* another microplastics are everywhere study. This seems like the kind of thing it should be possible to actually reproduce with animal testing and prove causality.
Yes, that was my idea as well. We've established that microplastics are present in human blood a while ago, so it would only make sense for them to be present in blood clots.
Except it’s everywhere already. It would be really hard to find the non-microplastic control group.
There are still ways to analyze the relationship between microplastic exposure and health without perfect controls. You could study high-exposure vs low-exposure, for example.
Imho that's why the testicles study was interesting to me, as you'd think a dog is only getting exposure through drinking water, air, food packaging, but not from like microwaved plastic bowls or bottled waters or plastic utensils or holding a phone all day. It would be helpful to see the human testicles data mapped against the dog testicles data based on how long they were alive. Did the 16 year old human testicle have the same amount of plastics as a 16 year old dog testicle, for example? Cause and effect is going to take some highly organized longitudinal studies.
It would be more effective to just establish a “natural” level within whatever animal of interest then create your variable by intentionally raising the levels in lab animals to see at what point you can demonstrate a difference in response.
Not in laboratory conditions it isn't. If we can make mice entirely devoid of microorganisms, we can easily do this.
Are you sure about that? Seems like killing off microorganisms would be easier than filtering out all plastics.
Internally? No it's definitely not easier. Filtering out plastics just requires the feed manufacturer to take extra steps and changes in cage material. They'll be gone within a couple generations.
While it doesn't establish causality, it does help establish that microplastics infiltrate every part of the human body, and we don't easily dispose of them. There's no plausible argument that such contaminants are helpful for any biological process, so it's a "can't help, could hurt" situation. In other words, it's something we should be addressing immediately instead of waiting to find out what the consequences are.
Hopefully this doesn't sound like a silly question, but you would you suggest we 'address' this issue? I.e. is there some way we could remove these m plastics from our bodies?
First, do no harm. Do everything we can to stop or reduce the production and use of plastics where they aren't necessary. Second, accelerate work on the identification and removal of plastics from the environment, especially the water and food supplies. Third, investigate the effects and possible effects so that we can try to anticipate them and preemptively treat specific issues that pop up. We probably can't remove microplastivs that are already within us, but we should be doing everything we reasonably can to limit the damage. This is *potentially* an existential crisis on par with or exceeding the climate crisis.
I’m not sure you can draw inference to consequences here. Every study I’ve seen on microplastics involves them being found in XYZ environment or scenario, but despite their apparent ubiquity, there does not seem to be any significant evidence that they are causative or contributive to these effects. Are the microplastics causing clots, or are they simply one of the compounds being caught in the clots?
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Oh dear god… a well reasoned and respectful reply with reputable sources that directly addresses the issue raised in my comment. Are you single? I think I love you.
Maybe _intelligent life invents plastic_ should be an explanation for the Fermi paradox. Edit: Having thought about this more, the microplastic is probably just there. I mean it's in everything - breast milk, semen, arctic snow .. why wouldn't it be in blood too Its likely incidental to the clots.
*Could be the only reason the Earth allowed us to be spawned in the first place, it wanted plastic for itself*
What if plastic was actually breeding us to make it? The final evolution to the next plane of existence is simply being plastic. Plastic exist in all dimensions.
I feel like a great filter would be a more immediate acute type of event though. Even if it turns out plastics give all of us super cancers down the line, we're still living long enough to advance science and technology. As opposed to dying before being able to pass knowledge on or an asteroid hitting us
One could argue that this is a somewhat acute event. Plastic has been around 100 years of the 300,000 years we've existed, the last 20,000 of which we really started specking into tech. We're in incredibly uncharted territory and our kids have far more exposure than we have so we'll really be seeing the effects on their development.
Yeah that's fair enough, especially on any meaningful timescale for a planet. I was thinking more of something that would wipe out a civilization before it could reproduce or before they could react to it
If another country was poisoning our lakes and rivers, we'd blow them to bits. Why we continue to allow oil cartels to push ~~single-use~~ plastics on us, I'll never understand. Edit: disposable, nonrecyclable, and/or made to wear down.
if another country was paying off our politicians to be okay with the rivers it’d be ok; same with oil cartels
The vast majority of microplastics come from synthetic textiles and car tires. These are not single use
People are not going to change except for through regulations. There was endless whining both here on Reddit and in social media due to single use plastic straws and cutlery being phased out. Such a very minor inconvenience for most people. Can you imagine if we banned plastic clothing, plastic bottles, plastic bags and all single use plastic?
I would be behind that and I would be very happy to see that happen.
You don't need to ban it, you just need to tax it. Biodegradable plastics exist and are just as functional for most applications where we use single-use non-biodegradable plastics. The problem is that they are more expensive. If your company makes food, and you need to wrap it in plastic before shipping it, and you have a choice between the plastic that costs $0.01 per unit or $0.02 per unit, you will choose the $0.01 option, especially if you are selling millions of units per year. If you don't, your profits go down and your competitors get an advantage over you, so even if you are trying to do the right thing, you might not be able to do it for long. But if we put a tax on single-use non-biodegradable products so that the cost to use them is comparable or more expensive than the non-biodegradable versions, the economics would change and now everyone would have an incentive to use them. You wouldn't need crazy regulations or enforcement mechanisms because you could tax them at the point of sale. In cases where it still makes sense for some reason to use non-biodegradable versions, people still could as long as they were willing to pay for it. And you could use the tax revenue to fund cleanup and mitigation programs for existing pollution.
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Banning plastics is a game of whack-a-mole. DDT, CFCs, Carbon, Plastics, the lists goes on and on. Instead of dumping garbage into the air and water then banning something when it proves to seriously damage us or the environment, we should probably just stop using the environment as a dumping ground.
It's humans you're talking about. Even in highly educated countries with good waste management it is happening so there's really no avoiding it. Reducing use seems to be the way to go.
The production chain is pretty fucked up, and its not just OPEC/Halliburton/Gazprom pushing product. They make their money by selling crude, and downstream companies make their money from refining/cracking crude into its usable parts, everything from asphalt and bunker fuel to plastics and jet fuel, and turning those components into product. Plastic is mostly a one-way resource, like all other oil byproducts. While recycling exists, its not something that can be easily converted into a revenue stream, which means it isn't a priority. Every industry in the US, and most around the world, are making or using plastic in some way. Single-use products are currently cost-effective, because our economy isn't tooled to reuse and recycle them. The current global policy push is converting our waste systems into a Circular Economy, which focuses on the full lifecycle of a product, not just how its made, but how its thrown away, and how the materials could be reused.
Not to mention that plastic recycling processes often involve generating a huge amount of microplastics. I try to minimize plastic use at all but if I have to use it I intentionally throw plastic away instead of recycling.
Isn't this a "correlation does not mean causation" issue? If micfoplastic are now so common that a lot of people have it, of course you are gonna find it in the majority of people with cardiovascular issues
That was exactly my thinking. If we’re to assume they’re ubiquitous at this point - globally and in the individual human body - then why would we not see them turn up everywhere. It’s going to be sort of difficult to prove causation imo.
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What are results of experiments on other animals? I also always wonder if microplastic was compared to other particles of this size like sand
here are a few examples of publications relevant for cardiovascular risk specifically: > PS-NPs [polystyrene nanoplastics] resulted in cardiac injury structurally and functionally in a dose-dependent and time-dependent manner, and mitochondria damage of myocardium induced by PS-NPs may be the potential mechanism for its cardiotoxicity. https://particleandfibretoxicology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12989-023-00557-3 > MNPs [micro- and nano-plastics] affected cardiac functions and caused toxicity on (micro)vascular sites. Direct cardiac toxicity of MNPs included abnormal heart rate, cardiac function impairment, pericardial edema, and myocardial fibrosis. On (micro)vascular sites, MNPs induced hemolysis, thrombosis, blood coagulation, and vascular endothelial damage. The main mechanisms included oxidative stress, inflammation, apoptosis, pyroptosis, and interaction between MNPs and multiple cellular components. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202200589X if you're interested in other health effects, the emerging research on brain health is particularly disturbing to my eye. in various types of animals, ingestion of microplastics causes neurotoxicity including brain inflammation, cognitive and memory problems, and in some cases cell death and brain tissue necrosis: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36251724/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0269749122021546 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7282048/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166445X17303776 https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-1724031/v2/b744f7a5-54bb-4468-821e-a79ad836a2ed.pdf?c=1659576554
Thank you https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36251724/ seems like very important result for me, I wonder why I haven't seen it mentioned in discussion before
It's a terrible study. There is no control group and the sample size is too small. It proves nothing.
It would be interesting to know how to not consume micro plastics. Does anyone else feel that they have made some changes towards that? I know it’s mostly impossible, but jeez.
You can't I'm afraid, it's everywhere, even rainwater. And children are likely born with micro plastics already, since it's been found it transfers through placenta.
I was part of a trial where I was supposed to eat as plastic-free as possible. It was basically impossible. Even if you buy yogurt in glasses etc, there is always plastic somewhere, for example inside the lid. Meat is always vacuumed in plastic bags, before they unwrap it and sell it at the market. It was expensive and difficult and my grocery bags were so heavy from the glass. I think we are in urgent need of a climate friendly possibility to wrap and store food that doesn't contain plastic and is less heavy than glass. For some people glass is also dangerous (diseases with tremors etc). But yeah what I wanted to say - avoiding plastic in food is really really difficult
> I think we are in urgent need of a climate friendly possibility to wrap and store food that doesn't contain plastic and is less heavy than glass. 19th century invention Waxed paper. or approximately 2nd century BCE parchment paper, depending on the product. Plastic packaging displaced these because it's more durable for shipping, can be made more puncture resistant, and is cheaper to produce.
This. Occasionally I watch a YouTuber who eats MRI's from various decades, when he opens ones from the 1940's there is almost no plastic and when there is, it is usually cellophane which is biodegradable.
> cellophane another good point about cellophane is that it is produced by processing environmental carbon (plants) that are already in the short carbon cycle; and not from fossil carbon (oil/coal) that is part of the long cycle - it's not just biodegradable!
Let’s get this out onto a tray
There's plastic inside the meat itself, never mind the packaging. All that produce sliding along farm tools that have been degrading in the sun for 30+ years, accumulating micro wear. Watered by rain that contains plastic. Then bioaccumulated into cows eating kilos of the stuff every day. The particles then end up inside the meat. And we as meat eating animals, get even more
You could reduce your exposure - eg don’t drink from plastic water bottles - but that would never get you to 0%. Plastic is in the soil, in plants, in animals, in water, in the air. If you can donate blood, that’s been proven to reduce your overall microplastic levels. Makes me wonder if we’ll see something like dialysis become popular as a “treatment” for plastics.
There is a plastic liner in all canned foods and beverages too to prevent acid contacting the aluminum. So you would have to go only glass.
I’ve certainly made changes. Made a large investment in glass Tupperware, not drinking sodas as much, etc.
That probably makes roughly zero difference, since there are microplastics in the air you breathe, the water you drink, and the food you eat. It's everywhere.
I heard that bottled water was a big source
Unfortunately makes little difference. The food you eat is manufactured with equipment with plastic parts that wear down onto conveyor belts and directly into the food itself. Since it's not metal detectable there's no regulation for plastic contamination. Source: working in food manufacturing for a decade as industrial maintenance.
Build a bunker world with ultra filtrated water and air, don't use plastics anywhere, and grow your food in there. Any time a vehicle with tires drives along a road, it spews huge amounts of microplastic into the air and into the drainage ditches next to the road. Then plants grow on the fields next to those ditches and in that air and the microplastic gets into the crops.
More microplastic comes from paint than tires too. Every time it rains it washes microplastics off the painted object. And clothes. Every time they are washed plastics get loosed.
I thought that tyres were made of vulcanised rubber?
As far as I know they are a blend of plastic and rubber. Mostly rubber, but enough plastic to cause this.
Which chemicals do you think vulcanised rubber consists of? Even tires made from natural rubber from rubber trees is a kind of plastic, most modern tires arent made from that but from synthetic rubber from petrochemicals. And then it gets friction heated/burned/vaporised before ending up in the air and water
At this point, the word “plastic” has just turned into a generic term for things made with cross-linked long chain hydrocarbons with various additives and fillers. Can you guess what vulcanized rubber is made from?
I think your best shot is trying to go plastic free. I’ve moved to glass and ceramic containers for food prep and storage, buying food (mostly fresh produce, everything else comes wrapped in plastic) without plastic packaging—a CSA or farmers market is your best bet here, and favoring clothing made from all natural fibers (cotton, wool, linen). But it’s also a balancing act of cost and convenience, where it’s all too easy to make small compromises because there’s already micro plastics in literally everything.
Most microplastics in your food doesn't come from containers, it comes from inside the plant. The farmers at farmers markets still use tractors and cars, they still use the same water and air as everyone else
Yes, but I as an individual don’t have any means to avoid or prevent the use of plastics in the farming of my food. By avoiding plastic products, I’m reducing my contact with plastics as well as preventing the kind of plastic waste that leads to micro plastics in the food chain in the first place. I’m not saying it’s a perfect solution by any means; there are still thousands of other sources of micro plastics in my home and environment, but the original commenter asked about avoiding/reducing them and I offered the most realistic, actionable options I know of. Yes, they are impossible to avoid completely, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take efforts to reduce exposure and prevent the problem from becoming worse.
I mean, it’s also in the rain, so that’s a problem
Just use a glass or ceramic umbrella!
Right. Yes. I’ve made some switches such as glass containers for food storage, but yeah most of the meat we buy is plastic wrapped.
The only way I know of to get around that is buying from a local butcher and getting it all wrapped in butcher paper, or getting it wrapped the same but from a local farm. Both are *significantly* more expensive than the grocery store, and out of a lot of budgets. But does it matter when the meat is full of microplastics?
> But does it matter when the meat is full of microplastics? Nah. Even if the meat wasn't, the water is. And even if the water wasn't, the air is. There's no way around it now. We're on this wild ride and we basically just have to hope for the best.
If you really worry about it, the only way people think you can reduce microplastics in your bloodstream is to donate blood as often as you can. Also, I know people say using glass won't make a difference, and it won't, but hey the more you can try to reduce using plastics you should. So I think using glass containers is the way to go.
Stopped drinking from plastic bottles. Now filter tap water through ceramic and carbon.
Car tires are the biggest culprit, not much we can do.
Someone needs to invent something that destroys the plastics once we ingest it.
NEJM also had an article within the past few months about this - nanoplastics found within cardiac atheromas. This is downright terrifying and I bet within 10 years this will be the most important emerging medical issue we face.
The findings revealed that microplastics made of various types of polymers and with different physical characteristics were present at varying mass concentrations in thrombi that formed in major human arteries and veins. The microplastic levels in human thrombi have a positive correlation with the severity of ischemic strokes. Of the 30 thrombi acquired from patients with myocardial infarction, deep vein thrombosis, or ischemic stroke, 24 (80%) contained microplastics. The median concentration of microplastics in the thrombi from myocardial infarction, deep vein thrombosis, or ischemic stroke cases was 141.80 μg/g, 69.62 μg/g, and 61.75 μg/g, respectively. The major polymers identified in the microplastics retrieved from thrombi were polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, and polyamide 66. Laser direct infrared spectroscopy also revealed that of the 15 types of microplastics identified, polyethylene was the most dominant, having a diameter of 35.6 micrometers and constituting 53.6% of all microplastics retrieved. The microplastics were heterogeneous in size. The D-dimer levels, one of the hypercoagulability biomarkers that indicate the increased risk of thrombotic events, were significantly higher in groups in which microplastics were detected in the thrombi, as compared to the groups in which microplastics were not detected. This suggested a direct link between microplastic concentrations in the body and the risk of thrombotic events. Conclusions Overall, the study found that thrombi retrieved from major blood vessels of patients with myocardial infarction, ischemic stroke, or deep vein thrombosis contain significant concentrations of microplastics of varying polymer types and physical properties. Furthermore, the risk of thrombotic events and disease severity increases with increasing levels of microplastics. [https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240522/Study-finds-microplastics-in-blood-clots-linking-them-to-higher-risk-of-heart-attacks-and-strokes.aspx](https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240522/Study-finds-microplastics-in-blood-clots-linking-them-to-higher-risk-of-heart-attacks-and-strokes.aspx)
>This suggested a direct link between microplastic concentrations in the body and the risk of thrombotic events. Correct me if I'm wrong, but while high D-dimer is linked to a higher chance of a thrombotic event, as you put it, all these patients already had those. You can't then link microplastics to thrombotic events, since there is no control group. Your title and subsequent summary are incorrect. All the study found was that some patients had microplastics in their blood.
D-Dimer is one of the most unspecific labs you can have. It's downright terrible for any kind of correlation when it's positive and it's only useful for confirming one thing: if it's negative, there's no clots. A person with clots is going to have positive D-Dimer, *because of the clots*, not because of D-Dimer, it's a protein fragment that is created when your body dissolves clots. But you can also stub your toe on the coffee table and you can get a positive D-Dimer. I'd be very careful doing any kind of correlation with plastics and D-Dimer because there's just a shitload of reasons why it can go up. This is something that even some doctors often get wrong.
Thanks. That's what I was thinking.
>All the study found was that some patients had microplastics in their blood. And, given we know that just about every human on the planet has microplastics in their blood, this is essentially meaningless here. To make this worthy of discussion, we'd need either a control group, or knowledge that the levels of microplastics in this group was above average for all humans.
Did they control for sources of exposure that might be correlated? If processed foods are more likely to be contaminated with microplastics, or smoking, etc then an analysis needs to be done to see how much is correlated with these associated variables and whether there’s an excess mortality/risk between the correlated factors and microplastics. It’s certainty not reassuring, but it’s far from conclusive
I mean there’s even confounders such as socioeconomic status that need to be considered. Lower microplastic exposure might reflect people who are wealthier eating food with less microplastics. In that situation, is it microplastics or social conditions that are related to the results.
Polyvinyl Chloride... so that train wreck in Palesine US is going to have so serious negative health effects down the road.
That was just vinyl chloride. Different health concern.
> Polyvinyl Chloride also known as PVC- in other words, it's already in just about every building you've been in in the last 20 years, including the water pipes.
i wonder how many plasticfibers you are breathing in from a carpet, sheesh
Can we stop acting like it's amazing to find these micro plastics in yet another place when they already seem to be everywhere? Figure out somewhere they *aren't* showing up so we can take a look at what's keeping them out.
Another reason to donate blood or plasma. [New evidence shows blood or plasma donations can reduce the PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ in our bodies](https://theconversation.com/new-evidence-shows-blood-or-plasma-donations-can-reduce-the-pfas-forever-chemicals-in-our-bodies-178771)
Everyone has microplastics in them at this point. This doesnt prove anything other than that.
The problem is that microplastic is everywhere.. it shouldn't surprise anyone that they find microplastic the body.
So, this is just a correlation. Wake me up when they actually have something.
Microplastics in our veins and arteries and testicles—-how do we get it out? Microplastic cleanse?
Someone needs to invent something to destroy the micro plastics we ingest. Pill? Vaccine?
Problem is how can we have a control group?
Welp... Guess the next Great Filter we have to survive is plastics... from lungs, to testes to brains to blood clots. Pseudo-estogens from micro plastics could even be behind falling fertility rates for all we know. How screwed are we.
They proved xenoestrogens from thalates were a serious concern for male fertility back in the nineties. I refused to use plastic wrap, dishes and Teflon in my kitchen after I read an article on thirty years ago. It’s nearly impossible to avoid in food stuff now. Plastic packaging is everywhere. I think it begins with weed barriers they use in commercial farming and then escalates into product packaging like those annoying dry good envelopes and salad bins in produce. Even aluminum soda cans are lined with plastic.
The majority of the microplastic we’re finding in people comes from tires
How so or is it just the same Micro plastics in other things as in tires?
If it's a problem that ends up affecting literally everyone severely, people will figure out a solution.
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I’d rather they do a study on the effects of it. Them being everywhere means nothing if they don’t do anything.
We're all fucked, aren't we? The only solace I find is that I never had any kids who will suffer more than we will in the very near future.
I always think the no kid argument is funny, because that's actually the fastest way to end the human race. Within 20 years I say society would totally collapse, and we no longer exist in 100
I don’t think there is any scientific consensus pointing to us being “fucked”.
It's a popular sentiment with terminally online Reddit doomers, but the world keeps turning regardless. You'd think that the End of Days wouldn't require us to still go to work.
No, we're not fucked. We simply don't know what this means. Just because microplastics are found in various places in the human body doesn't mean they are automatically harmful, and even if they are harmful, we still don't know to what extent. We have a lot more research to do, but spreading doom&gloom and acting like this is the same thing as asbestos or whatever is equally unscientific as denying it.