Why is glass seemingly healthier to use than plastic? Is it because it is more “natural?”
In: Chemistry
It does, and acute exposure to it is called [silicosis](https://www.lung.org/lung-health-diseases/lung-disease-lookup/silicosis). It’s pretty nasty. Don’t breath glass particles, kids.
Silica microparticles [have similar effects ](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7438384/)on cell cultures as plastic microparticles. That’s actually good news. Silica is in our drinking water, our air and our food. The fact that the earth’s surface is mostly silica that has been ground down continuously for billions of years, and we’re not all dead should tell us that small, largely inert particles don’t actually do that much in real world situations. It’s even accepted by the FDA as a food additive. Just like silica, microplastics are small, largely inert particles that are present in lower concentrations than silica is most situations. They’ve been shown to have bad effects in the lab, but always at concentrations millions or ever billions of times higher than we actually see in the environment.
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