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
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.
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.
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
Where are they coming from? What products?
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 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.
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.
Because we don’t have a fucking clue what it actually means, and we have absolutely no way to stop it.
We don’t know if they’re harmful in the long-term, and the fuckin’ ship has sailed… so if it turns out they are harmful, whatever harm they cause is just now a fact of life for everyone.
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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