Microplastics are Everywhere, but Their Health Effects on Humans are Still Unclear:
Plastic pollution is getting under our skin. Literally. As plastics have become ubiquitous in modern society, so too has plastic pollution, including that of tiny plastic particles. These microplastics have been detected in the air, water and even in some foods, making their presence in our bodies essentially inevitable.
"We definitely know we're exposed, there's no doubt," says Chelsea Rochman, an ecologist at the University of Toronto in Canada, who studies human-made pollutants in fresh and saltwater environments. "We drink it, we breathe it, we eat it.
How pervasive is that plastic exposure, and is it bad for your health? Scientists don't yet know, but they have some working theories. Here's what we know so far about these tiny, pervasive plastic particles.
Once it enters the environment, the plastic we throw away breaks down in the sun, waves and wind into much smaller pieces. We also producetiny plastic fibers and particles when we wash clothes, drive our cars, wear down carpets and upholstered furniture and more. Microplastics are any smaller than a quarter inch, often defined as a millimeter or smaller; nanoplastics are even more miniscule, measuring less than 0.1 micrometers (a micrometer is 1,000 times smaller than a millimeter).
The biggest sources of human exposure to microplastics likely come fromairborne dust,drinking water (including treated tap water and bottled water) andseafood (shellfish in particular, because we eat the entire animal), Rochman says. Scientists have also detected microplastics in products as varied as sugar, honey, German beer and sea salt. Emerging research suggests humans are consuming more than 100,000 microplastic particles a year, according to Kieran Cox, a Ph.D candidate and Hakai Scholar at the University of Victoria, Canada.
"Microplastics are now considered an emerging food safety concern, but we really don't have all the answers yet," says Dave Love, a microbiologist at Johns Hopkins who studies aquaculture, fisheries and related environmental, health and social issues.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @05:20AM (5 children)
Pollen grain walls persist in the environment for hundreds of millions of years. Literally. Unlike "microplastics", this is tested science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporopollenin [wikipedia.org]
Scared already?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @05:53AM
Actually, there is a beehive in the wall of this building over here. Everyone who licks it once a year gets a microexposure to all the toxins in town and never gets sick. Bees touch everything.
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Monday January 13 2020, @07:50AM (3 children)
False equivalency detected - try again.
Silicon dioxide persists even longer than that. Most of the time, it doesn't do any harm, except when inhaled under the "fine dust" form [wikipedia.org] - and it's advisable that you protect with a respirator mask if you know you are going to be exposed to it.
Also, fresh pollen is known for a long time as potentially fatal and those sensible to it need to take precaution in order to survive.
That's unlike microplastics, about which TFA says we don't know yet if some/all would need to take precautions when it comes to them - this seems to be a thing for which elevated concentrations is recent enough, and thus we don't know yet the impact on heath.
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Besides, in regarding sporopollenin specifically, a correction is needed: "
persistmay persist".From the linked with my emphasis:
If the conditions are suitable, full skeletons of dinosaurs can persist as fossils. But we already know that, in that form, they are no longer lethal. Not the same with plastics/microplastics.
Ah, so sporopollenin isn't indestructible? Let's see, besides pure physical processes, who may actually degrade it.
So, among others, thioacidolysis is used in de-polymerizing ligning [file]. Guess what some members of other genus/species are able to do the same (thus likely to degrade sporopollenin too)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @10:54AM (2 children)
Who was talking about inhalation? No one but you. Certainly not the FUD piece with the "Scientists have also detected microplastics in products as varied as sugar, honey, German beer and sea salt. Emerging research suggests humans are consuming more than 100,000 microplastic particles a year," in it. So why the blabbing?
Which is a really convoluted way to weasel out of telling the fact that at the moment we know we do not.
A purely imaginary "danger" for which no one yet managed to create any proof of despite a decade (or more?) spent trying. Only ridiculously high dosages do have any observable effect - ones thousands times higher than what the FUD piece is screaming about, all stuffed into one tiny mouse; and moreover, even in those unfortunate victims of scientific cruelty the concentrations plateaued while still being fed more of it, and went down once the feeding stopped. I.e. a natural mechanism for removing polymer microparticles observably does exist in mammals; would be surprising were it otherwise, given the plethora of hard biopolymers found in nature.
This is priceless. I dare you implement this process within your body.
"Thioacidolysis, that is, solvolysis in dioxane-ethanethiol with boron trifluoride etherate,
You hadn't even tried to imitate parsing the text, did you?
By the way, there are well-known natural degradation mechanisms for every common plastic in existence. Does not stop FUD mongers from pretending that plastics "do not degrade in nature", now does it?
The part about determining the structure of sporopollenin should be of interest to you for a different reason; specifically, this: "This discovery ... laying the foundation ... for the design of new biomimetic polymers with desirable inert properties."
When they do produce those nature-inspired polyvinyl plastics, I wonder what contorted FUD will have to be invented against that? *LOL*
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday January 13 2020, @01:38PM (1 child)
An example of contact with substance that we know is dangerous only on a certain way of contact.
Back to you to demonstrate you equivalency is good. Come on, you only need to demonstrate 3 points:
1. sporopollein is as ubiquitous as microplastics and can be found "in products as varied as sugar, honey, German beer and sea salt."
2. sporopollein is innocuous on any and all ways of administration
3. all microplastics are as innocuous as sporopollein
Based on your dismissive attitude, it should be easy-peasy-I-can solve-it-in-my-sleep kinda demonstration, right?
[Citation needed].
I imagine a decade (or more?) should have resulted in a large number of FA in science periodics, so it shouldn't be hard for you to support your claim.
I don't need to, many species of mushrooms are already able to degrade lignin, in a way that human managed to do it via thioacidolysis degradation
Ergo, it is likely that there exist species of mushrooms or molds able to degrade sporopollenin, using pathways that G.Shaw (the author cited by Wikipedia in your link) didn't try. He can assert "I couldn't find ways to degrade sporopollenin after trying these methods", but not "sporopollenin is absolutely impervious to biodegradation" (absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence)
BTW, those researchers at MIT didn't try too hard to degrade sporopollein or they just needed a quick way to do it. Because, otherwise, sporopollein capsules were found to degrade in various degrees in conditions similar with human digestive tract [nature.com]
Currently only one bacterium species able to eat PET (and PET only) [sciencemag.org] is known to exists and it needs cultivation conditions to do it efficiently [theconversation.com].
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And last; "demagogy" - I don't think it means what you think it means.
Specifically, I deny my post was trying to lead people [merriam-webster.com] or engage in politics based on popular prejudices [merriam-webster.com] to gain power
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @04:29PM
You could not ask a search engine of "plastic eating bacteria" and notice at the very least this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria [wikipedia.org]
Forgive my not buying your bullshit.
The "needing proof" of sporopollenin presence in mead of all things, do you really pretend to not know what bee is and what they do?
Case in point.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/demagoguery [dictionary.com]
If your trying to MISlead people by twisting words and wilfully ignoring facts are not "the methods or practices of a demagogue", it means you profess to believe the poor politicians do self-limit themselves out of those tools of trade. Which is demonstrably false.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday January 13 2020, @10:09AM (8 children)
Assuming we survive, future generations may look upon us as reckless experimenters. We've introduced thousands of novel substances into the environment and ourselves, with only cursory testing, just a quick check of short term effects to make sure the new substances aren't so highly poisonous or toxic that people drop dead within the day upon exposure to tiny amounts. Too often, long term effects have been disparaged and dismissed. Even with well founded suspicions that a substance might be troublesome, motivated industries have deliberately sowed confusion and doubt in order to keep their business. It's as Big Tobacco said: "Doubt is our product".
A list, just off the top of my head:
Now when I smell something that has that classic eye-watering, chemical plastic/gasoline sort of odor, I get rid of it.
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday January 13 2020, @11:35AM
Yeah, the smell of new Tesla arriving at space station https://www.wired.com/story/a-spacex-delivery-capsule-may-be-contaminating-the-iss/ [wired.com]
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Monday January 13 2020, @12:59PM
Mmmmh, I love the smell of Chinesium plastirubber polymers... every single day.
To be fair, we got rid of some of the craziest stuff like licking radium, most lead, thalidomide babies, etc. What we're left with are the harder to quantify toxins. Life expectancy has plateaued or only slightly declined, and that can be blamed on stuff like the opioid crisis. So enjoy the rest of your time as an experimental subject.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday January 13 2020, @01:22PM (5 children)
Will they, though? The average life expectancy has skyrocketed with all those substances relative to that of the ancient Romans who ate a purely organic diet.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @02:23PM (3 children)
If you leave out violent deaths and infants that would be aborted (and thus not count towards modern life expectancy stats) today, the life expectancy for the rich is pretty much the same as it has always been.
85: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_the_Elder [wikipedia.org]
77: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus [wikipedia.org]
81: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato [wikipedia.org]
Etc. The real driving force is *fossil fuels*, ie cheap energy, which allows more and more people to live like the rich.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday January 13 2020, @04:34PM
Still, average life expectancy has gone way, way up, and that's a good thing, probably.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @05:35PM
I doubt those microplastics are going to be shortening human life expectancy by decades (we'd have noticed by now). So with 7+ billion on this planet, even if human life expectancy goes down a few years and fertility drops it might not actually be a big issue... Heck the lifespan drop can probably be offset by eating a bit less bacon and/or consuming less sugar.
What's likely to happen in the future is lots more organisms are going to adapt to to digest plastics. And we might end up having to treat outdoor/exposed plastics to prevent them from "rotting" or being eaten. analogous to the way we have to treat wood.
Stuff didn't adapt to digest wood or lignin overnight. Modern plastics haven't been around for that long and already stuff is starting to adapt to be able to eat it - first various fungi and more recently supposedly some maggots.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday January 14 2020, @06:26AM
Fossil fuels reduce air quality.
UNICEF Says 17 Million Babies Worldwide Breathe Air Pollution Six Times Worse Than Recommended Limit [soylentnews.org] (includes related articles)
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @04:36PM
The Romans used lead acetate as a sweetener, resulting in various degrees of lead poisoning.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/sugar-of-lead-a-deadly-sweetener-89984487/ [smithsonianmag.com]
(Score: 1) by Ron on Tuesday January 14 2020, @02:57PM
The rise in micro-plastics in the environment over the past fifty years correlates to:
Rise in obesity over the past fifty years
Decline in male testosterone levels over the same period
Decline in male sperm counts over the same period
Decline in the quality of public discourse (intelligence, temperament...)
Decline in birth rates in countries with the most plastic exposure.
Rise in the levels of hostility between the sexes (anecdotal-- MeToo.)
Of course, and as always, correlation does not equate with causation. But plastics are known to mimic human hormones, and we're getting micro-dosed every single day we breathe.
Now, who's going to fund this study?