Eli5:why our body can’t just flush away all the plastic in our bodies?
In: Biology
Our body is really great at recognizing living things, like diseases (and nonliving viruses), parasites, etc. and giving us some indication of what’s wrong. Microplastics, however, are (by human standards) very new, and our body basically doesn’t know it exists. Our brain, sure, but not our body.
It’s like asking, why doesn’t your body expel a bullet when you’re shot? It does, sometimes, in the same way some plastic is filtered out through your body processes, but for all intents and purposes your body has no idea the plastic is there. It simply isn’t built to detect it, so it can’t force it out.
And also, some microplastics get into your individual cells, and then it’s the lone cells job to clean itself up.
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