Microplastics have been found almost everywhere: in blood, placentas, lungs – even the human brain. One study estimated our cerebral organs alone may contain 5g of the stuff, or roughly a teaspoon. If true, plastic isn’t just wrapped around our food or woven into our clothes: it is lodged deep inside us.
Microplastics are shed from packaging, clothes, paints, cosmetics, car tyres and other items. Some are tiny enough to slip through the linings of our lungs and guts into our blood and internal organs – even into our cells. What happens next is still largely unknown.
"Designing a definitive experiment is hard, because we’re constantly being exposed to these particles,” says Dr Jaime Ross, a neuroscientist at the University of Rhode Island in the US. “But we know microplastics are in almost every tissue that has been looked at, and recent studies suggest we’re accumulating far more plastic now than 20 years ago.”
I’ve eaten plastic all my life and I’m perffxct;yufines.
Future humans, or probably aliens, will use the plastic’s make up to determine how old we are. Like carbon dating. Or isotopes.
There used to be a joke that they’d find that layer of beige and blue that every computer peripheral was made of at one point, and be like “Ah, 1997”.
That doesn’t sound bad. It sounds helpful
Conservative weirdos out there going nuts about vaccines and 5G, and meanwhile all that Vitamin P they’ve got in their brains is like “lol now hallucinate deficit spending on turning feral hogs gay.”
None of these articles address how microplastics could be harmful. Everyone just assumes they’re bad. For example, what cellular machinery is being damaged?
as a cell biologist this confuses me.
usually we find the symptoms and discover the cause afterwards.
however, with micro plastics, we discovered the “cause” but somehow, haven’t really found any symptoms.
I’m assuming that having then is bad, yet it’s surprisingly inert.
I’m sure in 10 years we will find a massive horror that they cause when it’s too late.
How can we find a control group in the first place if we are all affected?
Good point, and another reason why it’s difficult,
however, you don’t always need a control, look ar Rachel Carson’s Silent spring.
which documented how having DDT everywhere in the world polluting all the waters leads to a decrease in Bird population without a DDT free planet to compare with besides the past.
You have an interesting writing style.
Gonna have to dissect some deceased inhabitants of North Sentinel Island as a control group.
I thought we’ve already been warned that all this plastic causes cancer. Like that’s why we’re not supposed to microwave things in plastic bowls & with plastic wrap, it supposedly causes cancer.
Some plastics cause cancer, others seem to be completely ignored by biological processes. Plastics range from cellophane which is basically just cellulose fibers chained together to Teflon which is basically entirely man made. It all depends, but generally speaking, plastic in the microwave is bad.
We think it might cause cancer, but don’t think we really seem any strong sognificant relationship.
Because it’s ultimately a Pascal’s Wager due to it being unknown.
You can assume they’re not bad and go all in on plastics. But if you’re wrong, you’ll pay for it worse than if you probably tried avoiding further intake as much as possible.
At the very least, we know that they’re chemically inert, but the current school of thought is that they might cause trouble as a result of that, by physically obstructing things, even if they don’t otherwise cause problems.
Asbestos is chemically inert, as are PFAS, but both are understood to be pretty bad for you
I think you might mean that PTFE/Teflon plastics are inert (at least unless burned).
PFAS chemicals used to emulsify or coat things with it are what gets into the water supply and causes problems.
PTFE and some others are considered chemically inert. Other PFAS are mostly chemically inert.
Carbon-fluorine bonds are extremely strong. If these weren’t mostly chemically inert, they wouldn’t be “forever” chemicals. They would readily degrade and it wouldn’t be an issue.
Phthalates are not chemically inert and they are endocrine disrupters.
This civilisation of ours runs on plastic. We have solid evidence that burning oil is going to kill as all, and we decided to not do anything about it. Plastic is way more ingrained in our civilisation, you need way more than “just in case it’s actually bad” to have us turn on plastic
Between microplastics, COVID, and loosening of environmental laws things are looking rough
We’ll just use our internal plastics to 3D print our way to Mars colonies, why can’t you see that?
This is how the human extinction will happen and it won’t be epic.
It’ll be because of plastic.
imagine future paleontologists a million years from now, being supercondused by the sedimentary layer full of WTF shit. why are all the fossils from that era contain strange polymers found nowhere in nature followed by a mass extinction.
A plastic asteroid must have hit the Earth!
except no asteroid crater was found, and while space research has discovered some organic compounds on some comets, they weren’t a match.
Also, hopefully we used all fossil fuels, so. they don’t have crude oil, therefore they might not develop plastics and have no idea how that happened.
although eventually a chemist will figure out plastics, and when they start using them, some will find that they are a match, and beg politicians to ban plastics, as they are the thing that ended a previous civilisation. but they will be ignored…
wait a few million years and then a new civilization will discover two distinct layers of micro plastics both with an ancient extinct civilization
I hope they write stories about how a mysterious giant asteroid made of strange synthesized polymers must have smashed our planet. It was probably a devastating mass driver attack by a technologically superior enemy capable of alchemy.
they would look for asteroids with similar polymers, and spend way too much time studying carboniferous asteroids.
i find that concept fascinating. because it’s “it’s never aliens” except this time it practically is but also unprovable.
I’m a few million years, i doubt there’s even human traces on the moon. although I imagine them finding some human dead satellite in geostationary orbit would blow their fucking minds
Can we think positive pls. What if our cells learn to process plastics and we slowly mechanically become immortal instead of carbon lifeforms we evolve into living silicon.
No, it will be because internet education will cause people to ignore actually preventative medicine like Pasteurization, hygiene, and vaccines.
Vaccine and hygene, sure. But pasteurization is not something that prevents an extinction, at least not currently. It prevents unnecessary death and illness for many.
We can take milk for example. If everyone drank unpasteurized milk, most people would be fine. But every now and then, you’d get nasty e-coli outbreaks here and there. Most would survive it after a really really shitty time, but some would die. This is really why some people are lead to believe pasteurization is unnecessary, because you don’t realize how important it actually is through anecdotes - you need statistics.
But of course, skepticism towards health science in general is a huge problem and most antipasteurizationers are antivaxxers as well.
Probably no extinction, but our current way of living will come to an end.
Since microplastics disrupts small blood vessels in the brain it probably causes cognitive decline.
Idiocracy?
I’m already feeling it bro
Yup. Climate change will get us close, but this will push us over the edge. Can’t survive a genetic bottleneck if you can’t make babies.
Welp can’t do anything about it now!
I just started watching Crimes Of The Future by David Fincher. It’s about human evolution and how we as a species are adapting to the world we’re making.
spoiler
SPOILER: there’s a secret subset of people who are in hiding because they eat plastic, and the governments of the world want to suppress them because they’re the next stage of human evolution
David Cronenberg?
The weirdest thing about David is he looks CGI. When I saw him in Discovery I thought he’d died and they’d had to digitally model him for a scene.
That makes more sense, tbh. And is probably true.
YES. And because this was a unbiased anecdote about the movie, I definitely want to see it now
What kind of massive teaspoon are these people using?
No, not as in an amount that would fit in a teaspoon, but as in the spoon itself.
So basically half a giraffe’s snot.
US loves to generate alarmist second rate science. Humans evolved breathing and eating all kinds of foreign dust, plant fibers, etc. This is why we have mucous linings and a lymphatic system.
No one has a mechanism for plastics toxicity (we have been making plastic implants for over 60 years). The best we get is people jamming stupid amounts into a poor mouse model for a disease. Plastic polymers are inert.
This is just another version of the BPA scare that again was never a threat and just people doing bad science in rodents.
Asbestos is also inert.
Higher exposure to these microplastics, which can be inadvertently consumed or inhaled, is associated with a heightened prevalence of chronic noncommunicable diseases, according to new research being presented at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session (ACC.25).
Found the person who can’t do science.
But… Microplastics are what brains crave! They’ve got electrolytes!
Per the article, it’s too early to draw strong conclusions about plastic toxicity.
But it’s always concerning when foreign material crosses the blood-brain barrier. It may not be a problem, but as far as I’ve seen, it wasn’t even a consideration a decade ago.
Concerning, yes
You gonna wait until they do before being concerned?
I’m concerned but I’m not gonna claim that people “can’t do science” if they express optimism/skepticism.
You don’t need to. Suggesting so doesn’t make me wrong. I also don’t value your existence, so… you’re welcome to your thoughts. Peace and love 💋
Don’t be an antagonistic little child.
😂😂
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Largely agreed. We’ve been cranking out plastics for a long time now. Shouldn’t we have noted effects by now? Everyone assumes microplastics are bad for us, but I haven’t read any possible mechanisms for damage.
Whenever I read something even slightly questionable I think, “How would that work?” Not seeing the mechanism(s). Anyone simply assumes this is bad. But tell me how these particles affect us, or how they could affect us. I’ll hear about any educated guesses.
