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.”
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.
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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.