It feels like every few weeks i see an article about microplastics being in the human body. As i understand plastics are inert so why do we expect them to be any more harmful than normal dust?
In: Biology
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.
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