Debunking Microplastic Myths: What We Actually Know About Plastic in Our Bodies
What Do We Know About the Microplastics Inside Us?
I built a plastics-free lab to expose how current methods overestimate microplastics in humans. My research reveals that lab contamination and lipid false positives have skewed data, debunking the viral claim that we eat a credit card's worth of plastic weekly. We need better science to truly understand our exposure.
The much-hyped finding that we eat a credit card's worth of plastic each week? That has absolutely been debunked.
- AyanamiKaine
Microplastics have always fascinated me, because I keep seeing article after article about how much microplastic exists around us, but far less strong evidence about its actual effects. That is not to say there are no effects, of course. Maybe we just have not found them yet.
A friend of mine worked on her bachelor’s thesis about the effects of microplastics on the immune system, specifically T cells. Her result was that the microplastic particles she studied were too large to interact with T cells.
She probably will not publish this result because she thinks it is not interesting enough. Classic file-drawer problem in academic science.
While I encourage her to do it anyways as a negative results is also interesting but she wanted results that are worthing of headlines in magazines.
- wxw
Some stand out takeaways:
> We assessed how reliable current measures are for trying to find microplastics in blood. And what we found is that lipids and fats will give you a false positive for polyethylene.
> We worked with an architect, and we built the lab pretty much from scratch. [...] So we ended up going with stainless steel. It was the only way to not have any plastics.
> I don’t think we’ve got really good evidence at all for what effects [microplastics particles on their own] might be having on human bodies. If we’re eating plastics, what size and what type of plastic can actually get into the bloodstream?
- odyssey7
We don’t fully understand even some of the most obvious pathologies. If a disease isn’t glaringly obvious and coupled with profit incentive, God help you. The question of what microplastics do to us is simply beyond the capabilities of both modern medicine and academic research institutions.
- 1970-01-01
Would have loved to see the effects broken down by plastic, as the term "plastics" is as non-specific as "metals" and "organic"
- skyq
I have grown to accept it. It is part of me now
- neptvn
So the article seems to pose more questions than it answers. I was expecting some observations from the plastic-free lab they built, and at least some evidence of the comparative impact vs. other labs that use plastic to study blood and other fluids (besides the 100-times-plastic/phthalates concentration in the air).
What exactly are they studying in the lab? The biggest takeaway from all this is that "we [still] don’t have enough information yet".
- tsoukase
Microplastics are even suspected for the low sperm count and power of men after the 70's. We can attribute to them any effect we observe today. It's insane. Let's accept that we cannot causaly link MPs with anything because we do not control the exposure and cannot perform a randomised trial. That is more scientific and sincere.
- Fedot
The latest studies I read suggested that while microplastics are found in our bodies, there's still no clear evidence of how harmful they are. So I don't think it's as scary as it's often portrayed.