Where do micro/nanoplastics store in the human body? What are the detriments/ramifications?
In: Biology
Just here to add that the easiest way to ingest a lot of microplastics is to drink a cup of tea made with the new fancy triangular tea bags. They’re made of plastic and it turns out they release millions of pieces of microplastic when exposed to hot water.
Microplastics are “stored” everywhere in the body. They have been found in blood, breast milk, the placenta of a fetus, and in every different tissue in the human body. This means there’s a variety of ways they can be introduced into the body, and once they’re inside, they just go wherever they go. It doesn’t seem like the body tries to do anything with them, so it’s just wherever it ends up is where it’s stored.
As for the ramifications, we don’t know. The concept of microplastics being inside of our bodies is relatively new, and there just hasn’t been adequate research on it. It’s a very difficult thing to research and finding what effects microplastics might have will likely take a long time. Proving cause and effect in medicine/biology is a VERY arduous process.
As I understand it there is research on this indicating that nanoplastics have been found to bind to certain proteins altering cell development and resulting in Parkinson’s and dementia…also endocrine systems have been seen to be involved and affected by nano and microplastics resulting in issues with diabetes, cancer, infant abnormalities etc –
How do we sue the companies to make them stop it somehow?
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