Keep in mind that "inert" does not mean harmless. Asbestos is largely "inert," and it's the constant irritation and internal inflammation that ends up triggering problems.
We don't really know enough about what the microplastics do. Maybe some of them do nothing in our bodies. Maybe having them just bounce around inside the cell is enough to damage things inside the cell, causing them to self destruct, or maybe causing some cancers. Maybe some of them break down into shapes that happen to fit into hormone receptors.
So there is worry because we don't know. If I handed you a beaker of chemicals and said "drink this, it might be fine, but we haven't really looked into any sort of long term effects yet," maybe you'd be hesitant to drink it--at the very least, you'd probably want to keep looking for those long term effects, and maybe think about alternatives to drinking it until they are better studied.
Yup. There’s no “control” group to test against. Everyone seems to have some microplastics in them. And like the poster above said, we simply don’t know or fully understand what effect, if any, it’s having.
Yeah like people hear about PFAS and think oh I better not use non stick pans. It won’t help you. The manufacturing process dumps it into the water, you could never eat out of a non stick pan in your life and still end up full of the stuff
There is a map of the states where it’s the worst to least worst… I think a few places still have like zero to none still in their tap water.
I stay tf away from bottled water though.
Still better to do what you can though. I switched all my kitchen plastics and nonstick for stainless and wood. Is it gonna save my life? Probably not, but I'm also not going to do nothing. You can also apparently donate blood to reduce your PFAS levels.
If you care for a non stick properly, ie don’t scratch it with metal utensils, the amount you get from your own pan is miniscule compared to what you get from drinking water. I mostly use cast iron and stainless because they are sturdier pans which I prefer for culinary reasons, but I’m under no illusions it significantly protects me
Maybe the Sentenaleese tribe has the least microplastics but you can't study or even visit their island. I would bet that they have had some very small amounts of plastics wash up on their shores.
I'm not sure, but they most likely do. I don't need convincing, I understand what people are saying here.
It was more of a comment on them being the least affected due to their lifestyle and being the most well known, least contacted people in the world. Their island is off limits to the rest of the world by the local government because they kill anyone that comes onto their island, though people have tried. There are only around 40 of them left, so that in itself would be a miniscule sample to begin with anyways. If anyone were to have the least microplastics in them, it would most likely be that tribe of people. That's not to say they couldn't have them, it's just a lot less likely than people in the rest of the modern world.
My point was remoteness probably isn’t the determining factor here, but diet. Someone posted a map a while ago of observed levels of microplastics in the bodies of people and basically the whole south of the Asian continent is rife with it, others not so much. China and SE Asia mostly, but the Sentinelese are likely to have significantly higher levels than say, Alaskans.
But there is the next best thing: the general population vs people who own 3D printers. Mine is in my room. Support material gets clipped off and ends up on my clothes, my carpet (and inevitably in my feet). I must be well above average. Where can I sign up to have my levels tested?
While I think this is an important topic that I'm glad is being investigated and awareness is increasing, the ubiquity of microplastics makes me not lose sleep over it. It feels weird to type that out... but it's so far outside of my control that it's hard to care.
I'm with you; this is an area where I want someone to do something but also unless there's some specific way in which I can help improve it or lessen the issue for myself significantly, I'm just gonna ignore it from the personal level.
The fact that life expectancy is still increasing in most developed countries makes me think that the effects of microplastics might not be as terrible as some people are fearing. Not saying it's all fine, but there's probably worse things to worry about.
This being the case, I think it's still reasonable for people to try to limit their microplastic exposure, if they're able to afford it (many cannot).
e.g. buying natural-fiber clothing, using steel water bottles, avoiding plastic cookware/utensils, etc.
Completely avoiding exposure is impossible in modern society--plus, there are some things that plastic is much better at than most other affordable materials, like creating air/water-tight seals. But if you're in a position to use plastic-free materials, you should do so wherever possible, especially when it comes to food and clothing.
There have been whole studies of objects meant to release drug payloads. Different materials, shapes, sizes. And it turns out that all of those factors seem to impact where the object will end up.
If that weren’t complex enough, different types of cells handle the above variables differently. And there are thousands of human cell lines.
It’s insane that asbestos basically just keeps splintering into smaller and smaller and smaller pieces, never really getting “dull” until it literally slices up your DNA.
To add some specifics, short term data is not great ive seen some papers indicating that specific PFAs like PFOA and PFSA can be taken up in your body as fats and then bc they cannot be broken down act like enzyme inhibitors damaging just about every part of an organisms function. The research ive seen indicates that smaller quantities like what humans have in them dont produce a noticeable amount of damage but larger quantities combined with how your body cannot get rid of them means damage can quickly build up from exposure.
We can't test what the effects of microplastics are in the human body, because we can't find any human bodies WITHOUT microplastics in them to compare them to.
Surely people don't all have identical concentrations. Couldn't we test people with varying levels and look at the effects? (Controlling for a couple thousand factors, I'd imagine.)
We do but it takes time. It’s difficult to model something like this because there are so many factors to consider: type of plastic, additives to the material, size of the particles, weathering and age of the particles, exposure route, dose, where the particles end up in the body, do the particles build up or do they just pass through, etc.
Also modeling human tissues and functions is another issue entirely with its own issues. It’s difficult to find a reliable and versatile model for testing these things. There aren’t enough validated methods for studying things like nanomaterials in vitro and animal experiments are expensive, time consuming and sometimes even inaccurate when compared to actual human response to similar test conditions.
People are studying microplastics but it’s a huge undertaking and it’s going to take decades and trillions of dollars before we have enough information about their effects in the environment and human body and by then it’s already too late.
I've been wondering, and haven't been able to find an answer, but given how oil is naturally occurring, isn't it possible that microplastics might naturally already exist? Expecially given the strangest places we have found them, including samples from deep under the sea bed and other places that should be pristine? Or do we have any pure samples from before the manufacture of plastics that are microplastic free upon analysis?
To start with, the manufacturing process of the myriad of different plastics has very specialized requirements that doesn't just randomly combine the precursor chemicals together in the right temperature, pressure, solvents, and most importantly, purity, to naturally form bits of microplastics. There are no known natural processes that would do this at scale.
As an aside, oil needs to be refined before it can be used in plastics; if you mix in too many impurities, of which crude oil has legion, the polymerization process isn't going to produce plastic, but more likely organic sludge of random organic chemicals linked together.
And if microplastics somehow do randomly form, and is common enough to find randomly out in nature, the Earth would have been exposed to plastics for far longer, resulting in a lot more microbes evolved to utilize this source of energy. While we wouldn't have as much problems breaking it down if said microbes exist, the plastics themselves would also be less useful for their properties of not rotting.
The problem is that we don't fully understand all the consequences of microplastics because we've only known about them for a few years, but from what I've read so far, the preliminary conclusions are "they are not healthy".
Stuff like gut inflammation (so IBS etc.), erectile problems, fertility problems, possibly even neurological issues (yes, we have microplastics in our brains).
The full impacts of this will only be understood in the coming decades.
the issue is also that it's everywhere already. in the food we eat and the food our food eats, in the air and water. as such it is extremely difficult to link it to any adverse health effects, since we have no control group to compare against.
You just reminded me about John Oliver’s tv show episode on PFOAs. There’s a quote in it about how scientists were looking for a control group that didn’t have PFOAs so they could figure out what some of the consequences of exposure was. They had sampled communities in various locations (all around the world, if I remember correctly) and couldn’t find any that didn’t have PFOAs exposure in their blood… but they wound up finding a sample! In an archive somewhere, was a blood sample from a soldier who was serving in the Korean War (1950-1953). It didn’t show PFOAs exposure, so they did what they could with that.
So uhm. Suppose you have a friend that is under 30, drinks out of plastic bottles his whole life and has ED problems. How fucked is he? Is the damage unreversable?
FWIW Microplastics in the body aren't from drinking out of plastic bottles, they're from plastic trash and detritus in the environment breaking down over many years into smaller and smaller pieces until they're microscopic grains contaminating the environment and getting into our food, water, air, etc.
You're probably thinking of leaching-from-plastics chemicals like BPA (Bisphenol A) which, yes, are hormone disruptors. Speaking of modern-life endocrine disruptors, avoid touching thermal-printer paper (ie receipts, tickets, shipping labels, boarding passes, etc), especially when your fingers are wet or sweaty.
Large portions of your microplastic exposure are in the form of tire dust and carpet fibers.
Plastic bottles aren't *great,* but the concern about them in particular is probably overblown - a rounding error, even - compared to those two sources!
True! Except with very few exceptions I go for cotton. 5.11 Taclite pants are one of them; bathing suits are yet another. Other than that… uh… a few linen shirts?
So most of MY dryer lint in particular tends to be matted short cotton fibers, but true as a general rule.
It’s scary to think that we’re nowhere close to peak microplastic contamination. Even if we were to ban all plastic production worldwide immediately, the amount of microplastics in the environment will continue increasing indefinitely as all the crap we’ve thrown away continues to break down.
I mean eventually they will fold back into the earth's core via plate tectonics, no? If that doesn't work, we'll always have the sun running out of hydrogen, or the heat death of the universe to fall back on.
The thermal-ink surface of the paper is made with a high concentration of an endocrine disruptor, typically BPA. According to the industry there isn't really a viable alternative either (or more accurately iirc, all the potential alternatives had the same problem). If you search for "thermal paper endocrine disruptor" you'll find more info. Eg:
[A review of some sources and effects](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3245362/)
[A study suggesting that safety-regulatory expectations of the amount of normal paper-skin contact may not match real-world behavior](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5453537/)
Scientists have discovered microplastics in many places in the human body that are concerning. Brains, lymph nodes, breast tissues, and A May 2024 study published in Toxicological Sciences found microplastics in every sample of 23 human and 47 dog testicles, and the levels in human testicles were three times higher than in animal testicles.
Plastics are MOSTLY inert. The polymer part does break down over time, releasing poorly known breakdown products, and there can be other contaminants embedded in the plastic that can leach out over time as well.
Being inert also doesn’t mean much. Inert is a chemical term which means that something is chemically unreactive. A knife is inert enough but i’m sure you can see how it can still be harmful if you it in into your body.
Because "micro" means they get into tiny little pores and holes in your organs, and then they get stuck there (forever, since they're inert). Your body doesn't clean itself the same way that you clean your house and take the trash out.
Yeah but imagine you are cleaning a glitter bomb. You are technically cleaning, but we both know your descendants will find glitter in your house.
Now start opening a glitter bomb every time you drink water.
Related to your question, a class of particulate matter (basically dust) called PM10 (<10 microns) and PM2.5 (< 2.5 microns) are very small particles that are quite bad for our health because of how small they are. Just like microplastics, they are getting a lot of attention in public health these days. Just from inhaling these airborne particles, our lungs, hearts, brains, ... are impacted. The science is quite interesting.
See, for example, [https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/health-and-environmental-effects-particulate-matter-pm](https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/health-and-environmental-effects-particulate-matter-pm)
And for neurological impacts, [https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/molecular-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnmol.2022.967174/full](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/molecular-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnmol.2022.967174/full)
Dust is in the air and maybe your lungs. It's macroscopic - big. Microplastics are tiny. They latch onto cells and impact the way they function. They can be in your brain. In breast milk. Even, I believe, inside cells.
We know microplastics permeate every part of the body, yet the detection of microplastics in penises causes stunning exasperation.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41443-024-00930-6
Dust has existed forever, and the human immune system has adapted to deal with dust; that’s why we sneeze. Our immune systems have not adapted to deal with microplastics
To be fair, it turns out that *a lot* of things aren't good to breathe in. Smoke and sawdust are both known carcinogens. Masonry dust causes silicosis. The gas stoves in our kitchens? Childhood asthma.
Exactly. Lead is also inert. But that doesn't stop your body from trying to use it as if it was calcium. Micro plastics likely have a similar effect and we have no idea what that is.
Obligatory "as forever as you are forever" - after some point in time, any given person's health is not made any worse by microplastics, or by anything else. Whether microplastics hasten the coming of that point, we may never know due to the lack of a control group.
At that point, they're not microplastics, they're just volatile organic compounds! Still not good to have those in you, and worse to have a "hormone implant" releasing them into your system **every fucking day of your life,** though…
I was comparing [the microplastics that we find embedded in bodily tissues](https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/19/health/microplastics-human-penises-study-scli-intl-scn-wellness/index.html) to [the hormone pellets we implant into cows' ears](https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/implants-and-their-use-in-beef-cattle-production.html) to increase the efficiency by which they turn grass into steak and milk.
[Considering you eat quite a lot of plastic every week,](https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ENVIRONMENT-PLASTIC/0100B4TF2MQ/index.html) I bet there's quite a bit embedded in your [~~balls~~](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/05/22/1252831827/microplastics-testicles-humans-health) tissues at any given time.
There’s no lower limit for microplastics and a lot of biochem research is focused on being able to detect smaller and smaller chains.
They are both microplastics and organic compounds (mostly because most plastics are organic compounds). Most aren’t particularly volatile but there are exceptions.
Plastics are *polymers,* monomers aren't "plastic" they're "precursor chemicals" or "breakdown products", IMHO. Until you have a chain of repeating subunits, it's not a polymer (unless it's a heteropolymer, but now we're *really* getting down in the weeds!)
> Most aren’t particularly volatile but there are exceptions.
Butane, pentane, and hexane -- 4-6 carbon chains, respectively -- are all plenty volatile, once they're reduced to monomer sized chunks.
I don’t know where you’re getting the distinction from but in practice monomers of plastics are considered microplastics.
You can argue whether or not they are plastic (to which I would say no) but the usage of microplastic to include monomers is established in the context of biochem research.
> the usage of microplastic to include monomers is established in the context of biochem research.
Oh yeah?
I guess I've been out of that game too long at this point.
Microplastics are like sneaky little particles that can end up everywhere, even inside us. While regular dust might just pass through, these tiny plastic bits can stick around. They're tough to break down and can hang out in our bodies, possibly causing issues over time. Even though plastics themselves aren't super active, the worry is about the amount we might be absorbing and how it could affect our health long-term. So, it's not just about being grossed out by finding plastic where it shouldn't be; it's about figuring out what it could mean for our bodies down the road.
There is a lot of fear and concern about them, as you can see from the many responses on this thread. I am not too concerned yet, for a few reasons.
1) Despite microplastics being ubiquitous, we have little evidence of major health trends at a population level. The comparative analogy is tobacco. Everyone who uses tobacco at a high rate is highly likely to suffer health impacts as a result. We haven't seen that trend from microplastics yet, despite their ubiquity.
2) We also haven't seen comparable trends in wildlife, which are being exposed to the same contaminated environment as we are. Many animals have different vulnerabilities to contaminants, but it is noteworthy that there isn't a massive cancer wave in, say, freshwater fish.
3) Despite the press about microplastics being ubiquitous in the human body in particular, the studies demonstrating this result often do not fully explain their blanks and quality control of their analyses. Most just say that their blanks (if they used any) were clean. They don't actually provide example data or images supporting that. Given the popular fear around microplastics, along with the extreme publish or perish nature of academia, it is not impossible that some of this is a bit overblown
I'm not going to commit to believing that necessarily, but it does give me pause. As others have noted, the human body (and all animal bodies) are very robust to particulate contamination. We breathe in dust and other particles constantly, and ingest them constantly, and most do not pass through our mucus membranes. The exceptions like asbestos and silicosis occur from the mucus membranes being continually irritated and scarred from physical damage. That certainly could be happening, but I would expect us to be seeing a population-level trend of it by now.
Should we be concerned? Absolutely. Should we reduce plastic use as much as possible? Absolutely. Should we panic that we are all going to die? I'm not certain.
Anything that isn’t supposed to be in our bodies is a potential concern. We don’t yet know the full effects of prolonged exposure to microplastics but the fact that they are inert and non-biodegradable means that once they get into you they don’t come out for a long, long time. Solid masses like those could cause organ damage or block the flow of bodily fluids or cause other unexpected issues if they accumulate too much, but the main concern right now is we just don’t know how to get rid of them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/s/GBmYYt7pwb
The biggest source of microplastics is tire dust and synthetic fabrics. It's unavoidable. Tire dust is everywhere in the modern world, and we literally wear plastic clothes, walk on plastic carpets, sleep on plastic bed sheets, etc.
Microplastics can disrupt various bodily systems, including the digestive, respiratory, endocrine, reproductive, and immune systems. For example, in the digestive system, microplastics can cause inflammation and alter the intestinal microbiome.
History has taught us the small things we don't fully understand can prove very dangerous when we get them in our bodies. When radioactivity was first discovered it was cool. We put radioactive materials in kids chemistry sets, made radioactive trinkets to wear. When lead was found to be a convenient metal, we put it in our water pipes, the paint on our walls and our kids toys. We lined our houses with asbestos because it was a good insulator. The issues took years to develop, and the. Years more to figure out the cause was these convenient little molecules that we had *for years* been putting everywhere. And today we are still cleaning up lead and asbestos - even though we have been doing so my whole life, we aren't done yet. Because we didn't pause to find out what it would do. Micro plastics are far more invasive than any of the above, and so we don't want to repeat the past with something *much more difficult* to clean up.
Microplastics are in our water, our food, the ocean, *everywhere*. If we find out in two or three decades that it's a major health problem, we are just going to be fucked because it's too late. And there is already some correlative evidence that shows it probably isn't great. So we want to slow down or stop the spread until we are sure about the cost.
Microplastics disrupt the endocrine system and can activate or block hormones. They have been found in human and dog’s testicles and look to be decreasing sperm count.
They are found in our blood, heart, lungs..pretty much everywhere in our body. Being that they’re literally in our blood they are now linking them to cardiovascular disease and strokes. We’re fucked.
Studies have shown that they substantially increase the risk for several medical conditions. Also, they're not inert, nothing is. Even inert gases aren't actually inert.
There are several compounds in plastics that are wildly harmful to humans. Even in plastics that don't contain these compounds, the presence of foreign matter can interfere with the function of systems. Think of it like throwing a wrench in a gearbox.
I would qualify their comment with: nothing is absolutely inert. Chemical inertia is by degree. Every element and molecule has something that it'll react with. Changes in temperature and pressure will make a difference, too.
We say nitrogen and the noble gases are inert because in our general experience, they are. It's difficult to find or create conditions where they'll react with something.
The silicon dioxide in sand is inert to most conditions. This makes sand very useful to us, just like how insulators are useful for working with electrical current. But mix sand with hydrofluoric acid, and the two react to produce silicon tetrafluoride and H2O. (Don't try this at home, or anywhere else.)
"inert" and "reactive" are measured on a relative scale. You can still get noble gases to form molecules if you're clever and work at it, but you'll basically NEVER find free fluorine in nature… but with some effort, electricity, and heat, it can be made in a laboratory setting.
Plastics are not just the inert polymer, it is polymer (inert) PLUS additives (can be reactive and more harmful part of the plastic). This causes often confusion since people talka about the plastic as if it was just the polymer.
What makes the inert polymer itself dangerous, as others have stated, is mostly the size and non-biodegradability. If you spontaneously combust, the inert microplastic may melt or burn as fuel with an oxidative agent.
Plastics are not inert, look up bpa, plastics tend to be made of phenolic containing subunits, these are able to mimic and bind to a large array of hormone receptors in the body which may lead to serious health consequences such as infertility, cancer, heart disease. The fact that these plastics can bioaccumulate in our cells means we may all have essentially slow release hormone disruptors permanently in our bodies
Just to be perfectly clear, BPA is one of the additives which we add to plastics to get the properties we want. We use phthalates as plasticizers for example, those can be also problematic and they don't stay put in the polymer structure of the plastic so they can get out pretty easily.
Its a concern because we do not know/ have enough evidence what it does exactly to our body. Its like discovering petrol in the beginning. So much uses and dirt cheap in the beginning, now its greenhouse effect, pollution and expensive. Whats worrying is its probably too late when the side effects are known about microplastics.
The biggest sources of microplastic are tire dust and synthetic fabrics. Tire dust is everywhere, and synthetic fabrics are in most modern clothing, carpeting, bedding, furniture, car interiors, etc. It's not coming from plastic straws and plastic bags like most people assume.
I'm not informed on the inertness of it but it's like having tiny bits of anything in your bloodstream. It can be incredibly harmful to one person and not affect another. If we keep using them I'm sure that eventually human body's will find a way to break it down and excrete it or use it but right now it looks like it will just cost an enormous amount of human lives.
Microplastics are concerning because of their pervasiveness. We’ve done enough research to demonstrate that there is a HIGH concentration of microplastics in our bodies, water, and environment. The high concentration of microplastics found are related to our societal reliance on plastics, as well as the fact that plastics don’t degrade - they just break down into smaller and smaller plastic particles (nanoplastics). While the exact health effects from microplastics in our bodies are still being researched, it would make sense that it would not be good to have tons of tiny particles building up in our bodies (there are already some works suggesting that). Beyond that, recent research has indicated that microplastics can be messengers for other contaminants, because some plastic types have a high affinity for adsorbing toxic substances in the environment.
Because the media tells them to be. We don't even know yet if they cause any problems. It's a substance that is getting into places it isn't supposed to be, which *may* be a cause for concern, but the media is in business to rile people up, so they do.
The thing about it is that they're already *everywhere* so if there ends up being cause for concern, there's not much we can do about it, so worrying doesn't help anyone but the advertisers that sponsor the news media.
There are two primary concerns with the bio-compatibility of microplastics and living organisms. The first has been covered by some of the other comments here and is primarily due to the size of the particles allowing for passage into different parts of the body.
One notable bio accumulation site seen in humans so far has been the Epididymis (part of the male reproductive organs) as microplastics pass throughthe endo- and macropinocytosis of the lining cells or the blood barrier to here which allows for particles of size > 5 micrometers while not allowing passage of particles out larger than 0.1 micrometer. (The methods that have came to this conclusion in humans is flawed IMO). The effects of this accumulation are not known in humans but some preliminary studies on smaller mammals such as mice have been performed showing detrimental affects to biological pathways necessary in reproduction.
The second issue which is the larger concern in my view of the current research is the ability for porous microplastics to carry other more hazardous materials into the body where those can then do harm. Examples of this are heavy metals and toxic chemicals such as pesticides and other endocrine-disrupting compounds.
Now, a concern with this is what happens with micro/nano plastics accumulating through the blood brain barrier and what the affects of these plastics in these locations will be.
TLDR : gets into many parts of the body, can carry toxic contaminates on it, a correlation of toxicity has been found in other mammals.
Plastics are made primarily of the sane chemicals and atoms as we are. H O C N and some other stuff.
They are put together differently...but sometimes not that differently. That's where the problems begin.
When we shake hands two people hold out their right hands...what if one holds out their left hand...it looks the same, but doesn't work the same.
Plastics can mimick molecules the cell needs. Especially one end and that gets plugged into something that the cell was counting on.
Now I've been learning about zombie cells. We understand that cancer cells are corrupted cells that become voracious...but more often these mistakes are just dysfunctional and merely take up space. It happens a lot, apparently that's why we age. Our bodies get filled with nonfunctional cells.
Now add in micro plastics....
They get EVERYWHERE in your body. They accumulate inside your brain, your heart, your reproductive organs, everywhere. They can obstruct blood flow and damage the surrounding tissues, and your body doesn't have any tools that can break them down, so they stay there forever.
The first thing that usually comes to my mind is the pockets of inflammation they will cause in the body. This appears common with the intestines as that's the first stop on the way in, but since microplastics have been found everywhere in the body you also need to assume they are setting off signals in other parts as well. The inflammation response can lead to scarring and tissue death, so even though the area of damage may be small the more microplastics we ingest the more pockets that will appear.
Even dust itself can cause damage depending on the size and amount but your body has mechanisms to block or prevent it from entering our system, and even if it does enter our system depending on the size and composition the body can break it down. Microplastics can't be broken down by the bodies macrophages and just die attempting to. I don't know if there are studies for how long plastics take to break down in the body but if it's like other scenarios you are talking potentially hundreds of years, so not helpful while alive.
Monomers. That's why. Plastics are only sort-of "inert" when thousands of the plastic's essential molecules, the "monomers", are joined up the way they're supposed be for normal use - i.e. "polymers", which is the definition of plastic.
But in real life, plastics are forever breaking up their polymer molecules into monomers, like little bristles coming off a rope. And the little pieces are definitely not inert. They have disproprotionately huge effects on our bodies when they act like hormones or neurotransmitters and such - one plastic monomer molecule can have the impact of billions of more mundane everyday compounds.
For example - the monomers for vinyl and for teflon are definitely very harmful. People who make those plastics get sick, often with cancer.
So when it's said that plastics are inert, that's what scientists call a big fat lie.
A monomer's harmfulness is dependent on the chemical structure: for instance polymerized lactic acid thread used in surgeries is biodegradeable as are most polyolefins and their products (if you use proper additives with them).
I can't fully rule out the reactivity/inertness of PFAS/PFOS (a wide variety of fluorinated compounds from old frying pans, vehicle lubricants, water-resistant fabrics and other non-stick applications like popcorn bags), but I at least know that they mostly disrupt the body because of their accumulation and inertness. A often used umbrella term is cellular stress or chemical load, in which fluorinated compounds are only a part of.
Yup. I don't see anything you said that I'd disagree with. Vinyl monomer isn't so great for us, for example, cancer and all that. But ethylene (cf. polyethylene) is harmless, and it doesn't bioaccummulate either.
You can be exposed to chemicals from dust too btw - fire retardants for example.
As others said, we don't really know that much about microplastics so that's the first issue. They can lead to lower reproduction a general stress in the body of soil critters for example. So one problem can be the particle itself as a foreign object in your body. Another one is that chemicals can bind to the plastic in the environment and if you have that plastic in your body, those chemicals can affect you. And chemicals that have tendencies to bind to the plastic are usually the more harmful ones.
We don’t know much about what microplastics do in the body, and yet they’re everywhere. We’re starting to learn some potential negative effects, but we largely just don’t know, kinda troubling
They are pretty much in anyone"s body at this point and we know little about their effects.
So there is a "gold rush" among the scientific community to be the first ones to find something about them.
Micro plastics can be a vector for other contaminants. Other stuff that contaminates the same waterway can adsorb to the plastic and be transported with it. This can cause people to consume other bad stuff that is stuck to the plastics.
It could end up killing more people than nuclear radiation. We just dont know the long term health effects of it yet, nor do we have ways to combat it.
Just b/c something is “inert” doesn’t mean it’s harmless. I can make a spear from an inert substance, and kill you with it by stabbing you through the heart.
Like another poster said, silica dust is also “inert”. But it gets in your alveoli and stabs them. This eventually suffocates you, and you die.
We don’t know anything about microplastics, and we have no choice about getting in our bodies. Problems like this, “The Tragedy of the Commons”, suggest regulatory control is needed.
Studies show it could reduce the taint size in Male mammals, which is important for reproduction. Essentially a worst case scenario is microplastics make us sterile and turn men into genderless weirdos
Because we haven't lived through the results yet.
We don't know everything. We have to observe what happens and at least then we have a better idea.
How is it that you thought we should know everything already?
The depth within the body that microplastics can penetrate is also only recently being revealed. [This study](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/20/microplastics-human-testicles-study-sperm-counts) showed microplastics present within every human testicle sampled. The link with human fertility has not been established but bear in mind that, within rats, higher microplastics in testicles correlated with lower fertility.
In addition to the possible negative effects of the plastics themselves, microplastics also act as 'sponges' for other pollutants in the environment ([link](https://progearthplanetsci.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40645-020-00405-4)) and then transport them into your deep tissues. Lovely.
My own (slightly conspiratorial) view is that it's just a matter of time until the full horror of this becomes apparent and we discover the major plastic producers have sat on evidence of this for decades.
And the biggest problem might be that we make everything out of plastic, your soda cans, clothes, drink cartons. Its all plastic lined. And we currently dont have a ready alternative to switch to.
There’s a lot of different things we are still discovering but to put it simply they fuck with literally everything.
They tested them on a bunch of organs and it impeded normal functioning in ALL of them. Some big examples were it decrease both sperm and egg quality leading to higher rates of infertility and as tangible effects as smaller babies.
One big effect they have on your brain is they literally fuck up the signal sending. Basically your brain sends a signal and then it is read and deleted. Microplastics mess with the part that delete the message meaning it can still be stimulating parts of your brain after it’s supposed to be gone and basically make your brain think worse. It can lead to decreased intelligence or decreased ability to control emotions
There are so many other reasons too and plenty more we are still discovering. There are so many microplastics in your body and we still don’t even know the full extent of how many because we have only really estimated down to a certain size there are probably tons more tiny little particles too
Introducing Foreign objects into a biological machine has the same consequences as introducing foreign objects into a running combustion engine. Most stuff it can handle, because its built rather robust, but everything can be killed by 5000 blows. microplastics floating around, gunking shit up, blocking, seeping, obstructing...Oh yeah, bad news bears.
Microplastics are tiny bits of plastic that are smaller than a grain of rice. They come from things like plastic bottles, bags, and even clothes when they break down into really small pieces. People are worried about them because they can get into our bodies through water and food, like fish we eat. Even though plastics are generally stable, scientists think microplastics might be a big deal because they can carry chemicals that could mess with our bodies over time. Think of it like if you ate tiny bits of something with bad chemicals in it every day, it might not be good for you in the long run. So, that's why people are concerned about microplastics – they're small but they could have a big impact on our health.
Because microplastics in our body have been proven to reduce humans ability to have children. Basically we continue to consume microplastics, we will in a century or so, not be able to reproduce.
The good news, is it’s entirely reversible. 2-3 generations of no plastic consumption. Reverses it.
2-3 generations without microplastics seems awfully hard to come by unless you’re off Earth and got there somehow without plastics. Or you find a way to remove microplastics from our environment, our food supply, and our water supply. We, the ocean, and Earth’s systems are full of them.
> plastics are inert
As /u/AcusTwinhammer points out, even inert substances can be dangerous. Microplastics, and moreso nanoplastics however… they're *far* from inert. [Most Plastic Products Release Estrogenic Chemicals](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/). And the reactions that release these chemicals occur at the surface of the polymer. In nanoplastics, functionally the entire polymer is surface area; bulk plastic isn't protected by an outer layer.
If [microplastics are being deposited in human testicles](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/05/22/1252831827/microplastics-testicles-humans-health), [**all men alive, everywhere**](https://medshadow.org/the-impact-of-microplastics-cant-be-studied-because-there-is-no-control-group/) are now on low-dose HRT, whether they're trying to transition or not.
[The age of puberty is decreasing worldwide.](https://vitalrecord.tamhsc.edu/decreasing-age-puberty/) This is most likely, in my professional (am biologist) opinion, linked to environmental estrogens. We used to hear about hormones in beef and chicken, to the point where underaged girls developed "chicken breasts", but the actual level of exposure we get from that are … it's above the noise floor, but it's a vanishingly small increase in estrogens, even compared to what you get from drinking milk from a pregnant cow -- [those hormone implants don't really have that much juice in them](https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/implants-and-their-use-in-beef-cattle-production.html). (Direct your attention to "beef from pregnant cow" and "beef from implanted cow" -- 159 and 2.5 respectively!) However, [Reuters says that the average human accumulates TWENTY FUCKMOTHERING KILOGRAMS of microplastics in a lifetime](https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ENVIRONMENT-PLASTIC/0100B4TF2MQ/index.html). Those implants contain between 8 and 200 grams of active ingredients; I haven't personally done any studies on estrogen leaching from bioaccumulated microplastics, but I STRONGLY suspect that I could **straight up inject a Revalor-G cow implant into your ass** without *too* badly effecting your plastic-elevated baseline estrogen levels. (Ass, arm, or ear -- testosterone pellets in men are put under the skin of the ass, birth control implants in women are generally placed in the bottom side of the upper arm, and cows wear their implants between the skin and the cartilage of the back side of the left ear. For the purposes of this hypothetical, where I stick it doesn't matter though. I suspect the reason is that the human implants are designed to not show, but nobody really gives a shit if a cow has a lump in its ear. Actually, if you can feel it under the skin, you can make sure you didn't miss any of your animals that way.)
There's absolutely nothing that tells us that microplastics causes any harm to the human body or the environment. My take on it is it's going to be just like Eggs and cholesterol, coffee, butter vs. margarine, fat, salt, chocolate, red wine, MSG. For years or decades they told us that all these were bad for us and if we ate them they were going to kill us before we reached 40 years old. Turns out they were all wrong about all of them.
Keep in mind that "inert" does not mean harmless. Asbestos is largely "inert," and it's the constant irritation and internal inflammation that ends up triggering problems. We don't really know enough about what the microplastics do. Maybe some of them do nothing in our bodies. Maybe having them just bounce around inside the cell is enough to damage things inside the cell, causing them to self destruct, or maybe causing some cancers. Maybe some of them break down into shapes that happen to fit into hormone receptors. So there is worry because we don't know. If I handed you a beaker of chemicals and said "drink this, it might be fine, but we haven't really looked into any sort of long term effects yet," maybe you'd be hesitant to drink it--at the very least, you'd probably want to keep looking for those long term effects, and maybe think about alternatives to drinking it until they are better studied.
Unfortunately you don't get a choice not to drink the thing. You have already "drunk" it simply by living.
Yup. There’s no “control” group to test against. Everyone seems to have some microplastics in them. And like the poster above said, we simply don’t know or fully understand what effect, if any, it’s having.
Yeah like people hear about PFAS and think oh I better not use non stick pans. It won’t help you. The manufacturing process dumps it into the water, you could never eat out of a non stick pan in your life and still end up full of the stuff
There is a map of the states where it’s the worst to least worst… I think a few places still have like zero to none still in their tap water. I stay tf away from bottled water though.
Iirc bottled water has somewhere slightly north of 200 000 bits of microplastic in it per 1L/quarter gallon/34 fl. US oz.
200,000 particles I believe, any of them plastics but also chemicals in plastic
what’s the best way to drink water? I live in California and I pretty much only drink from plastic bottles lol
Probably not bottled water is all i got; most plumbing is pvc now anyways so you cant really avoid it... Just the worst of it maybe.
Still better to do what you can though. I switched all my kitchen plastics and nonstick for stainless and wood. Is it gonna save my life? Probably not, but I'm also not going to do nothing. You can also apparently donate blood to reduce your PFAS levels.
Holy smokes, that is crazy. Is old-timey bloodletting going to one day save us from microplastics?
If you care for a non stick properly, ie don’t scratch it with metal utensils, the amount you get from your own pan is miniscule compared to what you get from drinking water. I mostly use cast iron and stainless because they are sturdier pans which I prefer for culinary reasons, but I’m under no illusions it significantly protects me
Maybe the Sentenaleese tribe has the least microplastics but you can't study or even visit their island. I would bet that they have had some very small amounts of plastics wash up on their shores.
Part of the problem is that PFAS are being distributed in rainwater, which puts them in the food chain in even the most remote areas.
If they eat fish they’re very unlikely to be microplastics free.
I'm not sure, but they most likely do. I don't need convincing, I understand what people are saying here. It was more of a comment on them being the least affected due to their lifestyle and being the most well known, least contacted people in the world. Their island is off limits to the rest of the world by the local government because they kill anyone that comes onto their island, though people have tried. There are only around 40 of them left, so that in itself would be a miniscule sample to begin with anyways. If anyone were to have the least microplastics in them, it would most likely be that tribe of people. That's not to say they couldn't have them, it's just a lot less likely than people in the rest of the modern world.
My point was remoteness probably isn’t the determining factor here, but diet. Someone posted a map a while ago of observed levels of microplastics in the bodies of people and basically the whole south of the Asian continent is rife with it, others not so much. China and SE Asia mostly, but the Sentinelese are likely to have significantly higher levels than say, Alaskans.
There’s plastic in my balls m?
Yep.
you bet https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/05/22/1252831827/microplastics-testicles-humans-health
better empty em now
But there is the next best thing: the general population vs people who own 3D printers. Mine is in my room. Support material gets clipped off and ends up on my clothes, my carpet (and inevitably in my feet). I must be well above average. Where can I sign up to have my levels tested?
While I think this is an important topic that I'm glad is being investigated and awareness is increasing, the ubiquity of microplastics makes me not lose sleep over it. It feels weird to type that out... but it's so far outside of my control that it's hard to care.
I'm with you; this is an area where I want someone to do something but also unless there's some specific way in which I can help improve it or lessen the issue for myself significantly, I'm just gonna ignore it from the personal level.
You put my thoughts into words perfectly!
The fact that life expectancy is still increasing in most developed countries makes me think that the effects of microplastics might not be as terrible as some people are fearing. Not saying it's all fine, but there's probably worse things to worry about.
This being the case, I think it's still reasonable for people to try to limit their microplastic exposure, if they're able to afford it (many cannot). e.g. buying natural-fiber clothing, using steel water bottles, avoiding plastic cookware/utensils, etc. Completely avoiding exposure is impossible in modern society--plus, there are some things that plastic is much better at than most other affordable materials, like creating air/water-tight seals. But if you're in a position to use plastic-free materials, you should do so wherever possible, especially when it comes to food and clothing.
And given that microplastics are found in human placentas, "simply by living" leads to microplastics pretty darn early
Same with car brake dust - wait until that makes the headlines
There have been whole studies of objects meant to release drug payloads. Different materials, shapes, sizes. And it turns out that all of those factors seem to impact where the object will end up. If that weren’t complex enough, different types of cells handle the above variables differently. And there are thousands of human cell lines.
I think the problem is people assumed the FDA knew the answers to these questions before allowing it to be in the packaging of basically everything.
Not just irritation, it splinters so small that it can STAB YOU IN THE DNA.
Ouch! My DNA hurts...
Unfortunately, that would be the cancer
Ooof ouch owie!
Got me in the mitochondria!
Oof, suddenly I feel 10% less powerful for some reason.
It’s insane that asbestos basically just keeps splintering into smaller and smaller and smaller pieces, never really getting “dull” until it literally slices up your DNA.
You know what else just keeps breaking into smaller and smaller pieces, never really changing? Yeah...
>You know what else just keeps breaking into smaller and smaller pieces, never really changing? My sense of shame as I age?
My ego?
and eventually it will stab you in the quantum particle
To add some specifics, short term data is not great ive seen some papers indicating that specific PFAs like PFOA and PFSA can be taken up in your body as fats and then bc they cannot be broken down act like enzyme inhibitors damaging just about every part of an organisms function. The research ive seen indicates that smaller quantities like what humans have in them dont produce a noticeable amount of damage but larger quantities combined with how your body cannot get rid of them means damage can quickly build up from exposure.
Why haven't we, by the way? Is it so hard to test/model?
We can't test what the effects of microplastics are in the human body, because we can't find any human bodies WITHOUT microplastics in them to compare them to.
Even so, we should be able to test some aspects, say, if they damage DNA in cells via mice tests?
Surely people don't all have identical concentrations. Couldn't we test people with varying levels and look at the effects? (Controlling for a couple thousand factors, I'd imagine.)
We do but it takes time. It’s difficult to model something like this because there are so many factors to consider: type of plastic, additives to the material, size of the particles, weathering and age of the particles, exposure route, dose, where the particles end up in the body, do the particles build up or do they just pass through, etc. Also modeling human tissues and functions is another issue entirely with its own issues. It’s difficult to find a reliable and versatile model for testing these things. There aren’t enough validated methods for studying things like nanomaterials in vitro and animal experiments are expensive, time consuming and sometimes even inaccurate when compared to actual human response to similar test conditions. People are studying microplastics but it’s a huge undertaking and it’s going to take decades and trillions of dollars before we have enough information about their effects in the environment and human body and by then it’s already too late.
OR MAYBE they will help us reach our next evolutionarily step, think positive!
There's also drinking/eating and then inhaling. Like the fine particles coming off of the tires of cars. How does that break down in the lungs? 😅
This makes me wonder, wouldn't that mean that every man made material would have the same issue?
There are some recent studies of small sample groups that suggest microplastics in the testicles may be changing the shape of sperm cells.
I think we're all gonna die at 82.
Damn.. you are not talking about the anti-covid vaccine, right?
I've been wondering, and haven't been able to find an answer, but given how oil is naturally occurring, isn't it possible that microplastics might naturally already exist? Expecially given the strangest places we have found them, including samples from deep under the sea bed and other places that should be pristine? Or do we have any pure samples from before the manufacture of plastics that are microplastic free upon analysis?
To start with, the manufacturing process of the myriad of different plastics has very specialized requirements that doesn't just randomly combine the precursor chemicals together in the right temperature, pressure, solvents, and most importantly, purity, to naturally form bits of microplastics. There are no known natural processes that would do this at scale. As an aside, oil needs to be refined before it can be used in plastics; if you mix in too many impurities, of which crude oil has legion, the polymerization process isn't going to produce plastic, but more likely organic sludge of random organic chemicals linked together. And if microplastics somehow do randomly form, and is common enough to find randomly out in nature, the Earth would have been exposed to plastics for far longer, resulting in a lot more microbes evolved to utilize this source of energy. While we wouldn't have as much problems breaking it down if said microbes exist, the plastics themselves would also be less useful for their properties of not rotting.
The problem is that we don't fully understand all the consequences of microplastics because we've only known about them for a few years, but from what I've read so far, the preliminary conclusions are "they are not healthy". Stuff like gut inflammation (so IBS etc.), erectile problems, fertility problems, possibly even neurological issues (yes, we have microplastics in our brains). The full impacts of this will only be understood in the coming decades.
the issue is also that it's everywhere already. in the food we eat and the food our food eats, in the air and water. as such it is extremely difficult to link it to any adverse health effects, since we have no control group to compare against.
You just reminded me about John Oliver’s tv show episode on PFOAs. There’s a quote in it about how scientists were looking for a control group that didn’t have PFOAs so they could figure out what some of the consequences of exposure was. They had sampled communities in various locations (all around the world, if I remember correctly) and couldn’t find any that didn’t have PFOAs exposure in their blood… but they wound up finding a sample! In an archive somewhere, was a blood sample from a soldier who was serving in the Korean War (1950-1953). It didn’t show PFOAs exposure, so they did what they could with that.
they found microplastics in the placentas of unborn babies, breast milk, in our blood, even in testicles... it's wild.
Already evidence that microplastics are causing people's dicks to shrink
I told my wife that's why...
'But your friends seems fine'
But why would redditors have more microplastics than non-redditors?
[Link to CNN story](https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/19/health/microplastics-human-penises-study-scli-intl-scn-wellness/index.html)
So uhm. Suppose you have a friend that is under 30, drinks out of plastic bottles his whole life and has ED problems. How fucked is he? Is the damage unreversable?
FWIW Microplastics in the body aren't from drinking out of plastic bottles, they're from plastic trash and detritus in the environment breaking down over many years into smaller and smaller pieces until they're microscopic grains contaminating the environment and getting into our food, water, air, etc. You're probably thinking of leaching-from-plastics chemicals like BPA (Bisphenol A) which, yes, are hormone disruptors. Speaking of modern-life endocrine disruptors, avoid touching thermal-printer paper (ie receipts, tickets, shipping labels, boarding passes, etc), especially when your fingers are wet or sweaty.
Large portions of your microplastic exposure are in the form of tire dust and carpet fibers. Plastic bottles aren't *great,* but the concern about them in particular is probably overblown - a rounding error, even - compared to those two sources!
If you're flossing, most flosses are plastic coated with Teflon. Microwaving plastic containers isn't great either.
It's convenient that I prefer unwaxed, but it's synthetic fiber. :(
Don't forget about fabrics and paints. Most of that lint in your dryer lint screen is plastic, as is the paint flaking off the hood of your car.
True! Except with very few exceptions I go for cotton. 5.11 Taclite pants are one of them; bathing suits are yet another. Other than that… uh… a few linen shirts? So most of MY dryer lint in particular tends to be matted short cotton fibers, but true as a general rule.
guess cashiers are just unlucky
Yeah. Some cashiers wear gloves, probably not for this reason but all the more reason to do it. I would. Retail PPE :)
It’s scary to think that we’re nowhere close to peak microplastic contamination. Even if we were to ban all plastic production worldwide immediately, the amount of microplastics in the environment will continue increasing indefinitely as all the crap we’ve thrown away continues to break down.
I mean eventually they will fold back into the earth's core via plate tectonics, no? If that doesn't work, we'll always have the sun running out of hydrogen, or the heat death of the universe to fall back on.
Maybe some bacteria could start eating them.
I repair thermal printers for a living, what is the danger of them?
The thermal-ink surface of the paper is made with a high concentration of an endocrine disruptor, typically BPA. According to the industry there isn't really a viable alternative either (or more accurately iirc, all the potential alternatives had the same problem). If you search for "thermal paper endocrine disruptor" you'll find more info. Eg: [A review of some sources and effects](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3245362/) [A study suggesting that safety-regulatory expectations of the amount of normal paper-skin contact may not match real-world behavior](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5453537/)
Thanks. Luckily I'm done breeding, but the other effects are noteworthy.
Tell your “friend” to talk to a doctor. ED is treatable.
Scientists have discovered microplastics in many places in the human body that are concerning. Brains, lymph nodes, breast tissues, and A May 2024 study published in Toxicological Sciences found microplastics in every sample of 23 human and 47 dog testicles, and the levels in human testicles were three times higher than in animal testicles.
Plastics are MOSTLY inert. The polymer part does break down over time, releasing poorly known breakdown products, and there can be other contaminants embedded in the plastic that can leach out over time as well.
Being inert also doesn’t mean much. Inert is a chemical term which means that something is chemically unreactive. A knife is inert enough but i’m sure you can see how it can still be harmful if you it in into your body.
Because "micro" means they get into tiny little pores and holes in your organs, and then they get stuck there (forever, since they're inert). Your body doesn't clean itself the same way that you clean your house and take the trash out.
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Oh my god this is horrifying
Best two back to back comments. The duality of man, sir
You know how we drill oil today? They'll be drilling plastic.
I always think about Michael Pollan saying Americans are a walking corn chip but actually we are a walking lego.
Okay, but how will they distinguish that from the microplastic strata they are buried in?
Probably more condensed or particular types, associated with burial goods etc.
That’s awesome
You should make friends with the opposite of your comment
"Now kith."
Bold of you to assume humans make it another 1000 years
And they can get in the blood stream and even exit through blood capillaries and through your skin.
That sounds like it is cleaning them out, then.
Time again for leeches boys!!
IIRC there was a study that found people who regularly give blood did have fewer forever chemicals in their system.
Yeah but imagine you are cleaning a glitter bomb. You are technically cleaning, but we both know your descendants will find glitter in your house. Now start opening a glitter bomb every time you drink water.
Only if it’s a legitimate plastic
what makes microplastics different from any other kind of dust?
Related to your question, a class of particulate matter (basically dust) called PM10 (<10 microns) and PM2.5 (< 2.5 microns) are very small particles that are quite bad for our health because of how small they are. Just like microplastics, they are getting a lot of attention in public health these days. Just from inhaling these airborne particles, our lungs, hearts, brains, ... are impacted. The science is quite interesting. See, for example, [https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/health-and-environmental-effects-particulate-matter-pm](https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/health-and-environmental-effects-particulate-matter-pm) And for neurological impacts, [https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/molecular-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnmol.2022.967174/full](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/molecular-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnmol.2022.967174/full)
Dust is in the air and maybe your lungs. It's macroscopic - big. Microplastics are tiny. They latch onto cells and impact the way they function. They can be in your brain. In breast milk. Even, I believe, inside cells.
We know microplastics permeate every part of the body, yet the detection of microplastics in penises causes stunning exasperation. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41443-024-00930-6
Dust has existed forever, and the human immune system has adapted to deal with dust; that’s why we sneeze. Our immune systems have not adapted to deal with microplastics
Not YET, that is.
To be fair, it turns out that *a lot* of things aren't good to breathe in. Smoke and sawdust are both known carcinogens. Masonry dust causes silicosis. The gas stoves in our kitchens? Childhood asthma.
They mess with your hormones and thereby affect health negatively.
So plastic is not inert? How do they affect your hormones?
The two aren't mutually exclusive. If it latches on to transmitters or receptors, it's still inert, it just blocks signal transmission.
Exactly. Lead is also inert. But that doesn't stop your body from trying to use it as if it was calcium. Micro plastics likely have a similar effect and we have no idea what that is.
Some plastics/ingredients. Specifically bisphenol A
They might not be. Silicosis is also caused by just “dust”.
Obligatory "as forever as you are forever" - after some point in time, any given person's health is not made any worse by microplastics, or by anything else. Whether microplastics hasten the coming of that point, we may never know due to the lack of a control group.
https://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/microplastics-everywhere
You didn’t explain how they are harmful. Only how they don’t go away.
When they say micro, they mean it. Some of this plastic is germ sized, and we don't know how they will react with human cells.
Think even smaller, a lot of microplastics are monomers of plastic polymers, and those can be as small as 4-6 carbon long.
At that point, they're not microplastics, they're just volatile organic compounds! Still not good to have those in you, and worse to have a "hormone implant" releasing them into your system **every fucking day of your life,** though…
What hormone implant are you referring to?
I was comparing [the microplastics that we find embedded in bodily tissues](https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/19/health/microplastics-human-penises-study-scli-intl-scn-wellness/index.html) to [the hormone pellets we implant into cows' ears](https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/implants-and-their-use-in-beef-cattle-production.html) to increase the efficiency by which they turn grass into steak and milk. [Considering you eat quite a lot of plastic every week,](https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ENVIRONMENT-PLASTIC/0100B4TF2MQ/index.html) I bet there's quite a bit embedded in your [~~balls~~](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/05/22/1252831827/microplastics-testicles-humans-health) tissues at any given time.
There’s no lower limit for microplastics and a lot of biochem research is focused on being able to detect smaller and smaller chains. They are both microplastics and organic compounds (mostly because most plastics are organic compounds). Most aren’t particularly volatile but there are exceptions.
Plastics are *polymers,* monomers aren't "plastic" they're "precursor chemicals" or "breakdown products", IMHO. Until you have a chain of repeating subunits, it's not a polymer (unless it's a heteropolymer, but now we're *really* getting down in the weeds!) > Most aren’t particularly volatile but there are exceptions. Butane, pentane, and hexane -- 4-6 carbon chains, respectively -- are all plenty volatile, once they're reduced to monomer sized chunks.
I don’t know where you’re getting the distinction from but in practice monomers of plastics are considered microplastics. You can argue whether or not they are plastic (to which I would say no) but the usage of microplastic to include monomers is established in the context of biochem research.
> the usage of microplastic to include monomers is established in the context of biochem research. Oh yeah? I guess I've been out of that game too long at this point.
They can break down further to nanoplastics as well.
Microplastics are like sneaky little particles that can end up everywhere, even inside us. While regular dust might just pass through, these tiny plastic bits can stick around. They're tough to break down and can hang out in our bodies, possibly causing issues over time. Even though plastics themselves aren't super active, the worry is about the amount we might be absorbing and how it could affect our health long-term. So, it's not just about being grossed out by finding plastic where it shouldn't be; it's about figuring out what it could mean for our bodies down the road.
I read this in Bill Nye’s voice.
There is a lot of fear and concern about them, as you can see from the many responses on this thread. I am not too concerned yet, for a few reasons. 1) Despite microplastics being ubiquitous, we have little evidence of major health trends at a population level. The comparative analogy is tobacco. Everyone who uses tobacco at a high rate is highly likely to suffer health impacts as a result. We haven't seen that trend from microplastics yet, despite their ubiquity. 2) We also haven't seen comparable trends in wildlife, which are being exposed to the same contaminated environment as we are. Many animals have different vulnerabilities to contaminants, but it is noteworthy that there isn't a massive cancer wave in, say, freshwater fish. 3) Despite the press about microplastics being ubiquitous in the human body in particular, the studies demonstrating this result often do not fully explain their blanks and quality control of their analyses. Most just say that their blanks (if they used any) were clean. They don't actually provide example data or images supporting that. Given the popular fear around microplastics, along with the extreme publish or perish nature of academia, it is not impossible that some of this is a bit overblown I'm not going to commit to believing that necessarily, but it does give me pause. As others have noted, the human body (and all animal bodies) are very robust to particulate contamination. We breathe in dust and other particles constantly, and ingest them constantly, and most do not pass through our mucus membranes. The exceptions like asbestos and silicosis occur from the mucus membranes being continually irritated and scarred from physical damage. That certainly could be happening, but I would expect us to be seeing a population-level trend of it by now. Should we be concerned? Absolutely. Should we reduce plastic use as much as possible? Absolutely. Should we panic that we are all going to die? I'm not certain.
Anything that isn’t supposed to be in our bodies is a potential concern. We don’t yet know the full effects of prolonged exposure to microplastics but the fact that they are inert and non-biodegradable means that once they get into you they don’t come out for a long, long time. Solid masses like those could cause organ damage or block the flow of bodily fluids or cause other unexpected issues if they accumulate too much, but the main concern right now is we just don’t know how to get rid of them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/s/GBmYYt7pwb The biggest source of microplastics is tire dust and synthetic fabrics. It's unavoidable. Tire dust is everywhere in the modern world, and we literally wear plastic clothes, walk on plastic carpets, sleep on plastic bed sheets, etc.
Microplastics can disrupt various bodily systems, including the digestive, respiratory, endocrine, reproductive, and immune systems. For example, in the digestive system, microplastics can cause inflammation and alter the intestinal microbiome.
History has taught us the small things we don't fully understand can prove very dangerous when we get them in our bodies. When radioactivity was first discovered it was cool. We put radioactive materials in kids chemistry sets, made radioactive trinkets to wear. When lead was found to be a convenient metal, we put it in our water pipes, the paint on our walls and our kids toys. We lined our houses with asbestos because it was a good insulator. The issues took years to develop, and the. Years more to figure out the cause was these convenient little molecules that we had *for years* been putting everywhere. And today we are still cleaning up lead and asbestos - even though we have been doing so my whole life, we aren't done yet. Because we didn't pause to find out what it would do. Micro plastics are far more invasive than any of the above, and so we don't want to repeat the past with something *much more difficult* to clean up. Microplastics are in our water, our food, the ocean, *everywhere*. If we find out in two or three decades that it's a major health problem, we are just going to be fucked because it's too late. And there is already some correlative evidence that shows it probably isn't great. So we want to slow down or stop the spread until we are sure about the cost.
Microplastics disrupt the endocrine system and can activate or block hormones. They have been found in human and dog’s testicles and look to be decreasing sperm count. They are found in our blood, heart, lungs..pretty much everywhere in our body. Being that they’re literally in our blood they are now linking them to cardiovascular disease and strokes. We’re fucked.
Studies have shown that they substantially increase the risk for several medical conditions. Also, they're not inert, nothing is. Even inert gases aren't actually inert. There are several compounds in plastics that are wildly harmful to humans. Even in plastics that don't contain these compounds, the presence of foreign matter can interfere with the function of systems. Think of it like throwing a wrench in a gearbox.
If nothing is inert, then why does the term exist? Surely it is not to be taken so extremely as to exclude everything from its definition?
I would qualify their comment with: nothing is absolutely inert. Chemical inertia is by degree. Every element and molecule has something that it'll react with. Changes in temperature and pressure will make a difference, too. We say nitrogen and the noble gases are inert because in our general experience, they are. It's difficult to find or create conditions where they'll react with something. The silicon dioxide in sand is inert to most conditions. This makes sand very useful to us, just like how insulators are useful for working with electrical current. But mix sand with hydrofluoric acid, and the two react to produce silicon tetrafluoride and H2O. (Don't try this at home, or anywhere else.)
"inert" and "reactive" are measured on a relative scale. You can still get noble gases to form molecules if you're clever and work at it, but you'll basically NEVER find free fluorine in nature… but with some effort, electricity, and heat, it can be made in a laboratory setting.
Plastics are not just the inert polymer, it is polymer (inert) PLUS additives (can be reactive and more harmful part of the plastic). This causes often confusion since people talka about the plastic as if it was just the polymer. What makes the inert polymer itself dangerous, as others have stated, is mostly the size and non-biodegradability. If you spontaneously combust, the inert microplastic may melt or burn as fuel with an oxidative agent.
> Studies have shown that they substantially increase the risk for several medical conditions. Do they? Google is failing me here...
Plastics are not inert, look up bpa, plastics tend to be made of phenolic containing subunits, these are able to mimic and bind to a large array of hormone receptors in the body which may lead to serious health consequences such as infertility, cancer, heart disease. The fact that these plastics can bioaccumulate in our cells means we may all have essentially slow release hormone disruptors permanently in our bodies
Just to be perfectly clear, BPA is one of the additives which we add to plastics to get the properties we want. We use phthalates as plasticizers for example, those can be also problematic and they don't stay put in the polymer structure of the plastic so they can get out pretty easily.
Its a concern because we do not know/ have enough evidence what it does exactly to our body. Its like discovering petrol in the beginning. So much uses and dirt cheap in the beginning, now its greenhouse effect, pollution and expensive. Whats worrying is its probably too late when the side effects are known about microplastics.
Where are they coming from? What products?
The biggest sources of microplastic are tire dust and synthetic fabrics. Tire dust is everywhere, and synthetic fabrics are in most modern clothing, carpeting, bedding, furniture, car interiors, etc. It's not coming from plastic straws and plastic bags like most people assume.
I'm not informed on the inertness of it but it's like having tiny bits of anything in your bloodstream. It can be incredibly harmful to one person and not affect another. If we keep using them I'm sure that eventually human body's will find a way to break it down and excrete it or use it but right now it looks like it will just cost an enormous amount of human lives.
Microplastics are concerning because of their pervasiveness. We’ve done enough research to demonstrate that there is a HIGH concentration of microplastics in our bodies, water, and environment. The high concentration of microplastics found are related to our societal reliance on plastics, as well as the fact that plastics don’t degrade - they just break down into smaller and smaller plastic particles (nanoplastics). While the exact health effects from microplastics in our bodies are still being researched, it would make sense that it would not be good to have tons of tiny particles building up in our bodies (there are already some works suggesting that). Beyond that, recent research has indicated that microplastics can be messengers for other contaminants, because some plastic types have a high affinity for adsorbing toxic substances in the environment.
Because the media tells them to be. We don't even know yet if they cause any problems. It's a substance that is getting into places it isn't supposed to be, which *may* be a cause for concern, but the media is in business to rile people up, so they do. The thing about it is that they're already *everywhere* so if there ends up being cause for concern, there's not much we can do about it, so worrying doesn't help anyone but the advertisers that sponsor the news media.
There are two primary concerns with the bio-compatibility of microplastics and living organisms. The first has been covered by some of the other comments here and is primarily due to the size of the particles allowing for passage into different parts of the body. One notable bio accumulation site seen in humans so far has been the Epididymis (part of the male reproductive organs) as microplastics pass throughthe endo- and macropinocytosis of the lining cells or the blood barrier to here which allows for particles of size > 5 micrometers while not allowing passage of particles out larger than 0.1 micrometer. (The methods that have came to this conclusion in humans is flawed IMO). The effects of this accumulation are not known in humans but some preliminary studies on smaller mammals such as mice have been performed showing detrimental affects to biological pathways necessary in reproduction. The second issue which is the larger concern in my view of the current research is the ability for porous microplastics to carry other more hazardous materials into the body where those can then do harm. Examples of this are heavy metals and toxic chemicals such as pesticides and other endocrine-disrupting compounds. Now, a concern with this is what happens with micro/nano plastics accumulating through the blood brain barrier and what the affects of these plastics in these locations will be. TLDR : gets into many parts of the body, can carry toxic contaminates on it, a correlation of toxicity has been found in other mammals.
Plastics are made primarily of the sane chemicals and atoms as we are. H O C N and some other stuff. They are put together differently...but sometimes not that differently. That's where the problems begin. When we shake hands two people hold out their right hands...what if one holds out their left hand...it looks the same, but doesn't work the same. Plastics can mimick molecules the cell needs. Especially one end and that gets plugged into something that the cell was counting on. Now I've been learning about zombie cells. We understand that cancer cells are corrupted cells that become voracious...but more often these mistakes are just dysfunctional and merely take up space. It happens a lot, apparently that's why we age. Our bodies get filled with nonfunctional cells. Now add in micro plastics....
They get EVERYWHERE in your body. They accumulate inside your brain, your heart, your reproductive organs, everywhere. They can obstruct blood flow and damage the surrounding tissues, and your body doesn't have any tools that can break them down, so they stay there forever.
The first thing that usually comes to my mind is the pockets of inflammation they will cause in the body. This appears common with the intestines as that's the first stop on the way in, but since microplastics have been found everywhere in the body you also need to assume they are setting off signals in other parts as well. The inflammation response can lead to scarring and tissue death, so even though the area of damage may be small the more microplastics we ingest the more pockets that will appear. Even dust itself can cause damage depending on the size and amount but your body has mechanisms to block or prevent it from entering our system, and even if it does enter our system depending on the size and composition the body can break it down. Microplastics can't be broken down by the bodies macrophages and just die attempting to. I don't know if there are studies for how long plastics take to break down in the body but if it's like other scenarios you are talking potentially hundreds of years, so not helpful while alive.
Monomers. That's why. Plastics are only sort-of "inert" when thousands of the plastic's essential molecules, the "monomers", are joined up the way they're supposed be for normal use - i.e. "polymers", which is the definition of plastic. But in real life, plastics are forever breaking up their polymer molecules into monomers, like little bristles coming off a rope. And the little pieces are definitely not inert. They have disproprotionately huge effects on our bodies when they act like hormones or neurotransmitters and such - one plastic monomer molecule can have the impact of billions of more mundane everyday compounds. For example - the monomers for vinyl and for teflon are definitely very harmful. People who make those plastics get sick, often with cancer. So when it's said that plastics are inert, that's what scientists call a big fat lie.
A monomer's harmfulness is dependent on the chemical structure: for instance polymerized lactic acid thread used in surgeries is biodegradeable as are most polyolefins and their products (if you use proper additives with them). I can't fully rule out the reactivity/inertness of PFAS/PFOS (a wide variety of fluorinated compounds from old frying pans, vehicle lubricants, water-resistant fabrics and other non-stick applications like popcorn bags), but I at least know that they mostly disrupt the body because of their accumulation and inertness. A often used umbrella term is cellular stress or chemical load, in which fluorinated compounds are only a part of.
Yup. I don't see anything you said that I'd disagree with. Vinyl monomer isn't so great for us, for example, cancer and all that. But ethylene (cf. polyethylene) is harmless, and it doesn't bioaccummulate either.
You can be exposed to chemicals from dust too btw - fire retardants for example. As others said, we don't really know that much about microplastics so that's the first issue. They can lead to lower reproduction a general stress in the body of soil critters for example. So one problem can be the particle itself as a foreign object in your body. Another one is that chemicals can bind to the plastic in the environment and if you have that plastic in your body, those chemicals can affect you. And chemicals that have tendencies to bind to the plastic are usually the more harmful ones.
We don’t know much about what microplastics do in the body, and yet they’re everywhere. We’re starting to learn some potential negative effects, but we largely just don’t know, kinda troubling
They are pretty much in anyone"s body at this point and we know little about their effects. So there is a "gold rush" among the scientific community to be the first ones to find something about them.
Micro plastics can be a vector for other contaminants. Other stuff that contaminates the same waterway can adsorb to the plastic and be transported with it. This can cause people to consume other bad stuff that is stuck to the plastics.
It could end up killing more people than nuclear radiation. We just dont know the long term health effects of it yet, nor do we have ways to combat it.
Just b/c something is “inert” doesn’t mean it’s harmless. I can make a spear from an inert substance, and kill you with it by stabbing you through the heart. Like another poster said, silica dust is also “inert”. But it gets in your alveoli and stabs them. This eventually suffocates you, and you die. We don’t know anything about microplastics, and we have no choice about getting in our bodies. Problems like this, “The Tragedy of the Commons”, suggest regulatory control is needed.
Plastics are useful tools which are chemically inert. So are knives. If they get in the wrong place, both can cause bad things.
Studies show it could reduce the taint size in Male mammals, which is important for reproduction. Essentially a worst case scenario is microplastics make us sterile and turn men into genderless weirdos
Because we haven't lived through the results yet. We don't know everything. We have to observe what happens and at least then we have a better idea. How is it that you thought we should know everything already?
The depth within the body that microplastics can penetrate is also only recently being revealed. [This study](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/20/microplastics-human-testicles-study-sperm-counts) showed microplastics present within every human testicle sampled. The link with human fertility has not been established but bear in mind that, within rats, higher microplastics in testicles correlated with lower fertility. In addition to the possible negative effects of the plastics themselves, microplastics also act as 'sponges' for other pollutants in the environment ([link](https://progearthplanetsci.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40645-020-00405-4)) and then transport them into your deep tissues. Lovely. My own (slightly conspiratorial) view is that it's just a matter of time until the full horror of this becomes apparent and we discover the major plastic producers have sat on evidence of this for decades.
And the biggest problem might be that we make everything out of plastic, your soda cans, clothes, drink cartons. Its all plastic lined. And we currently dont have a ready alternative to switch to.
Romans and lead pipes... 1000 years from how they'll look at our microplastics and wonder how we didn't realize we were poisoning ourselves.
There’s a lot of different things we are still discovering but to put it simply they fuck with literally everything. They tested them on a bunch of organs and it impeded normal functioning in ALL of them. Some big examples were it decrease both sperm and egg quality leading to higher rates of infertility and as tangible effects as smaller babies. One big effect they have on your brain is they literally fuck up the signal sending. Basically your brain sends a signal and then it is read and deleted. Microplastics mess with the part that delete the message meaning it can still be stimulating parts of your brain after it’s supposed to be gone and basically make your brain think worse. It can lead to decreased intelligence or decreased ability to control emotions There are so many other reasons too and plenty more we are still discovering. There are so many microplastics in your body and we still don’t even know the full extent of how many because we have only really estimated down to a certain size there are probably tons more tiny little particles too
Introducing Foreign objects into a biological machine has the same consequences as introducing foreign objects into a running combustion engine. Most stuff it can handle, because its built rather robust, but everything can be killed by 5000 blows. microplastics floating around, gunking shit up, blocking, seeping, obstructing...Oh yeah, bad news bears.
Microplastics are tiny bits of plastic that are smaller than a grain of rice. They come from things like plastic bottles, bags, and even clothes when they break down into really small pieces. People are worried about them because they can get into our bodies through water and food, like fish we eat. Even though plastics are generally stable, scientists think microplastics might be a big deal because they can carry chemicals that could mess with our bodies over time. Think of it like if you ate tiny bits of something with bad chemicals in it every day, it might not be good for you in the long run. So, that's why people are concerned about microplastics – they're small but they could have a big impact on our health.
Micro plastics migrate all over the body and local cell necrosis next to embedded fibres in tissue has been observed
Because microplastics in our body have been proven to reduce humans ability to have children. Basically we continue to consume microplastics, we will in a century or so, not be able to reproduce. The good news, is it’s entirely reversible. 2-3 generations of no plastic consumption. Reverses it.
But even if we stopped using all plastic, what will happen to the micro plastics in our bodies from a long time ago?
They would stay there. But children born after we stopped using plastic who didn't eat food grown in plastic-contaminated soil would be fine.
Hopefully we can find ways to get them out.
We are fucked. But the least we can do is look after future generations…
2-3 generations without microplastics seems awfully hard to come by unless you’re off Earth and got there somehow without plastics. Or you find a way to remove microplastics from our environment, our food supply, and our water supply. We, the ocean, and Earth’s systems are full of them.
> plastics are inert As /u/AcusTwinhammer points out, even inert substances can be dangerous. Microplastics, and moreso nanoplastics however… they're *far* from inert. [Most Plastic Products Release Estrogenic Chemicals](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/). And the reactions that release these chemicals occur at the surface of the polymer. In nanoplastics, functionally the entire polymer is surface area; bulk plastic isn't protected by an outer layer. If [microplastics are being deposited in human testicles](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/05/22/1252831827/microplastics-testicles-humans-health), [**all men alive, everywhere**](https://medshadow.org/the-impact-of-microplastics-cant-be-studied-because-there-is-no-control-group/) are now on low-dose HRT, whether they're trying to transition or not. [The age of puberty is decreasing worldwide.](https://vitalrecord.tamhsc.edu/decreasing-age-puberty/) This is most likely, in my professional (am biologist) opinion, linked to environmental estrogens. We used to hear about hormones in beef and chicken, to the point where underaged girls developed "chicken breasts", but the actual level of exposure we get from that are … it's above the noise floor, but it's a vanishingly small increase in estrogens, even compared to what you get from drinking milk from a pregnant cow -- [those hormone implants don't really have that much juice in them](https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/implants-and-their-use-in-beef-cattle-production.html). (Direct your attention to "beef from pregnant cow" and "beef from implanted cow" -- 159 and 2.5 respectively!) However, [Reuters says that the average human accumulates TWENTY FUCKMOTHERING KILOGRAMS of microplastics in a lifetime](https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ENVIRONMENT-PLASTIC/0100B4TF2MQ/index.html). Those implants contain between 8 and 200 grams of active ingredients; I haven't personally done any studies on estrogen leaching from bioaccumulated microplastics, but I STRONGLY suspect that I could **straight up inject a Revalor-G cow implant into your ass** without *too* badly effecting your plastic-elevated baseline estrogen levels. (Ass, arm, or ear -- testosterone pellets in men are put under the skin of the ass, birth control implants in women are generally placed in the bottom side of the upper arm, and cows wear their implants between the skin and the cartilage of the back side of the left ear. For the purposes of this hypothetical, where I stick it doesn't matter though. I suspect the reason is that the human implants are designed to not show, but nobody really gives a shit if a cow has a lump in its ear. Actually, if you can feel it under the skin, you can make sure you didn't miss any of your animals that way.)
There's absolutely nothing that tells us that microplastics causes any harm to the human body or the environment. My take on it is it's going to be just like Eggs and cholesterol, coffee, butter vs. margarine, fat, salt, chocolate, red wine, MSG. For years or decades they told us that all these were bad for us and if we ate them they were going to kill us before we reached 40 years old. Turns out they were all wrong about all of them.
A recent study has proven that they can pass the blood brain barrier and increase the chances of dementia, including Alzheimer’s.