Can someone ELI5 this for me: how would microplastics passing through a digestive system end up in "proteins*"? Are they being stored directly in the fats, within cells, between muscle fibers...?
(* the article seems to be using the term "protein" in the culinary sense, not the molecular sense).
The article only reports number of microplastics without reporting mass. This is particularly difficult to interpret when fibers are responsible for so much of the total:
Notably, across all samples, nearly half (44%) of the identified microplastics were fibers, which is consistent with other studies suggesting that fibers are the most prevalent form of microplastic in the environment.
Are 4 fibers of 50 micron length 4 times more dangerous than one 200 micron long fiber? There's no discussion of it in the article, but reporting microplastics by number of countable particles carries that implication.
So what do we do about them?
Is there any way to remove microplastics from a person/animal once already ingested?
What technology if any is being worked on to help alleviate this?
If, like me, your first question was "Which protein should I eat more of to avoid microplastics?", you can find the study's results graphed here: https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S02697491230223...
I sometimes have this feeling that in the future, when all of the science on this stuff is well established, our future enlightened society will simply take the view that plastic is poisonous. I think it'll be the same way that we think of lead, mercury, etc: like "wash your hands if you touch the stuff" levels of poisonous. I would not be surprised if society makes this shift in the next 20-30 years. Some of the recent results are really nuts:
- You eat a credit card sized amount of plastic every week: https://nautil.us/you-eat-a-credits-card-worth-of-plastic-ev... - 93% of bottled water has plastic in it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16793888 - Plastic containers, even "safe" ones, release plastic into food: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36532812 - Car tires are depositing plastic everywhere, including oceans: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37726539
It goes on and on. There are studies showing it gets into the placenta, harms animals, affects behavior, stays in your system forever, bioaccumulates all the way up the food chain and makes its way into every organ, and so on. This is all within the last few years. It seems like bottled water is a vector for this stuff very similar to lead pipes, and tires are a vector similar to leaded gasoline, and that the evidence is basically all there and all that is needed is a big epidemiological "smoking gun" study to put it all together.
Of course not every single thing one could possibly call "plastic" need be equally unsafe. Probably some better plastic will be devised which is safer for use in tires and etc. Still, I think there will be a society-wide push against so-called "plastic", in general. People will probably push to replace everything made of plastic with something else: replacing saran wrap with parchment paper, Tupperware with glass, etc.
I'm not super interested in defending this rigorously as it's really just a hunch, but I'm curious if this is what happens.
>Notably, across all samples, nearly half (44%) of the identified microplastics were fibers, which is consistent with other studies suggesting that fibers are the most prevalent form of microplastic in the environment.
Seems like one could live on a vegan diet and still be consuming a lot of plastic fiber. My favorite blankets, rugs, and t-shirts are all 100% polyester.
Even if I managed to use avoid plastics at home, plastic lint is everywhere in public too.
If this has been happening for decades, why are lifespans still increasing, why are average heights of new generations increasing, etc?
I know PFAS are hormonal disrupters in research but it seems like most people are doing... just fine?
Instead of looking for evidence of consumption risk at current/past levels — it would be good to know: what is the threshold of continuous daily ingestion beyond which microplastics are harmful. The answer can't be infinity of course, so it would be worth finding the threshold, and then how far we're off from that threshold based on current growth.
Not suggesting to have humans consume concentrated concoctions of plastics, but however ethically science allows.
Makes me think of scifi.
What if there's some kind of plastic cliff that most species in the universe don't survive?
We worry about virus epidemics, global warming, asteroids, etc.
On one hand, plastic reduces weight, transportation costs and the costs of things and is more versatile. On the other hand it causes another form of pollution. Modern life would be very different without plastic.
Feels truly irreversible, save moving to a new earth.
Have we been able to link any real harm to microplastics? I know it sounds bad intuitively. But can we draw a link to any diseases? What if this just amounts to fear mongering?
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I have done zero research, am not at all qualified to say any such things… but I feel like microplastics will eventually be looked back on the way we look back on asbestos today. “People used to throw PLASTIC in the ocean?!” We are in that awkward period of being aware, yet the damage has been done, so now we wait for the long-term effects to manifest.
Again, probably wrong, not at all an opinion to be taken as fact, just a gut feeling. History tells us that there will at least be SOMETHING perceived as normal today that is later discovered to be not okay, anyway. Plastic, social media, hell, maybe even EV after 50 years of batteries rotting in landfills.
Plastics, let alone microplastics, are a rather small problem that seem to get a lot of airspace.
There are no established health effects of microplastics. There are magnitudes worse health problems in e.g. both under and overnutrition that cause a lot less panic and fuss.
https://www.undp.org/kosovo/blog/microplastics-human-health-...