I heard a lot about microplastic getting into our bodies through fish and other food. But what are exactly consequences of having microplastic in body? Problems with fertility? High cancer risks? Lower immunity? What are exactly consequences of microplastic in our bodies? Should I avoid certain food? Or should I make blood test to check how much microplastic I have in my body?
In: Biology
Plastics are synthetic, man-made chemicals. The rest of our body is natural and living.
Think of it like trying to mix two things that do not go well together. Vaseline and water comes to mind.
Beyond that, some of the chemicals certainly may cause cancer or have other impacts on your health.
For the most part, we don’t know. It’s still a new field of study.
Some specific plastics are known to be harmful if ingested, and it’s not a big leap to assume breaking them down into tiny bits doesn’t make it any better.
Much of the discussion around microplastics at this point is people being surprised by how much there is, and just making the reasonable guess that it probably doesn’t improve the function of our bodies.
>Problems with fertility? High cancer risks? Lower immunity
There have been studies with strong evidence linking microplastics with all of these health issues, and there is still a lot of research yet to do.
Microplastics harm our body in 3 main ways.
1. Plastic is made out of petrol and other chemicals like BPA, phthalates and PFAS which can cause cancer by damaging our DNA inside our cells if these chemicals get inside us, (remember, DNA is basically the instructions and blueprints that tell our cells how to do their entire job). When microplastics get inside our body, they can “leech” or slowly ooze out these chemicals into our blood stream and cells. giving us small doses of harmful, poisonous chemicals every day
2. Microplastics are a physical object. Plastic is bendable (that’s where the word plastic comes from, it’s greek, *plastikos*, means “to mould or shape”) but plastic can also be sharp and hard, and microplastic, while microscopic and tiny, is the same. It can have hard sharp edges that cause physical damage inside our bodies on a microscopic level. From microabraisions and tiny cuts from larger bits of plastic, all the way down to tiiiiiiiny cellular damage – bruising and scraping to cell walls, often in our digestive track and lungs.
3. Allergic reactions – Our body knows that we are not supposed to have plastic inside us, so our immune system will try to attack it. Our immune system is designed to attack viruses and bacteria. All the tools and weapons our immune system has are good for killing little living germs and bugs, not un-alive bits of plastic. So our immune system reacts and reacts, but can’t get rid of the “invader”. This makes us sicker and sicker over time, and can cause the immune system to start to attack itself, and get weaker in the long term from all that damage.
All three of these things combined make microplastics very dangerous for our health, and a very real issue we should be trying to globally address. But sadly, there is not much we as individuals can do to make it better for ourselves, outside of political and buyer activism and pressure on larger systems. Microplastics are already everywhere!
But don’t be too alarmed, as I said, we have lots of research yet to do, we may find safe and effective ways to filter or remove microplastics from our body. There are currently species of mushroom that like to eat plastic, so some scientists are studying what they can do with these mushrooms, and there is a lot of other amazing research too.
Look up doctor Shanna Swan, she’s awesome and charismatic and explains how alarming this is as well as how to de-plastify your life
We don’t know what the exact consequences are.
There is a great deal of speculation on possible consequences. There are some studies that *might* show a correlation with certain negative consequences – but not like “smoking will definitely mess up your lungs and has a strong chance of killing you”; rather more like “this might possibly increase your risk of X by some percentage.”
It’s *possible* that they will have significant long-term or chronic effects.
We do know for sure they don’t have significant immediate or acute effects. They’re not like arsenic, where you just fall over dead.
There is a great deal of concern precisely because we don’t know – and in medicine, unknowns are usually risky. There are lots of ways that they *could* cause problems, and other posts in this thread have explained those possible mechanisms. But in medicine, “could” is not the same as “will” – we don’t know yet whether e.g. the physical abrasions of microplastics will turn out to be significant or insignificant over the course of a typical human life.
In terms of individual, localized action, there is no meaningful action for you to take. There are some guides on reducing plastic use, but they range from ineffective to impractical for most people. There’s microplastic in pretty much everything at this point.
In terms of long-term action, you can vote for and otherwise support politicians/movements that support funding to medical research (to find out exactly what the consequences will be), public medicine (for widespread treatment if needed), environmental and consumer-goods regulations (to lower/control plastic use), etc.
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