Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Researchers have discovered that microplastics, once ingested, travel from the gut to tissues such as the liver, kidneys, and brain, potentially causing significant health issues. The team’s findings emphasize the critical link between gut health and overall well-being, with ongoing studies exploring how diet and gut microbiota interact with microplastic absorption. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
It’s happening every day. From our water, our food, and even the air we breathe, tiny plastic particles are finding their way into many parts of our body.
But what happens once those particles are inside? What do they do to our digestive system?
In a recent paper published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, University of New Mexico researchers found that those tiny particles – microplastics – are having a significant impact on our digestive pathways, making their way from the gut and into the tissues of the kidney, liver, and brain.
Research continues to show the importance of gut health. If you don’t have a healthy gut, it affects the brain, it affects the liver and so many other tissues. So even imagining that the microplastics are doing something in the in the gut, that chronic exposure could lead to systemic effects.
[...] While other researchers are helping to identify and quantify ingested microplastics, Castillo and his team focus on what the microplastics are doing inside the body, specifically to the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and to the gut immune system.
Over a four-week period, Castillo, postdoctoral fellow Marcus Garcia, PharmD, and other UNM researchers exposed mice to microplastics in their drinking water. The amount was equivalent to the quantity of microplastics humans are believed to ingest each week.
Microplastics had migrated out of the gut into the tissues of the liver, kidney and even the brain, the team found. The study also showed the microplastics changed metabolic pathways in the affected tissues.
In Vivo Tissue Distribution of Polystyrene or Mixed Polymer Microspheres and Metabolomic Analysis after Oral Exposure in Mice” by Marcus M. Garcia, Aaron S. Romero, Seth D. Merkley, Jewel L. Meyer-Hagen, Charles Forbes, Eliane El Hayek, David P. Sciezka, Rachel Templeton, Jorge Gonzalez-Estrella, Yan Jin, Haiwei Gu, Angelica Benavidez, Russell P. Hunter, Selita Lucas, Guy Herbert, Kyle Joohyung Kim, Julia Yue Cui, Rama R. Gullapalli, Julie G. In, Matthew J. Campen, and Eliseo F. Castillo, 10 April 2024, Environmental Health Perspectives.
DOI: 10.1289/EHP13435
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 17 2024, @07:03PM (2 children)
In the 1990s we were investigating the circulatory effects of therapeutic device. The method was to inject various colors of microspheres (of latex, I believe) then sacrifice the subject (piglet), harvest the various organs of interest (brain, liver, kidneys, etc.) and puree them, then smear a measured amount of organ smoothie on a slide and count the number of colored spheres found, control vs treatment.
I suspect, had the piglets somehow escaped, those colored microspheres would have remained lodged in the various parts of their body for the rest of their life.
Welcome to the machine: you are now the experimental subjects, and the experiment wasn't designed, it is just an emergent property of modern life.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Funny) by Barenflimski on Monday June 17 2024, @07:22PM (1 child)
My family and I killed me, smeared me on a slide and looked under a microscope.
No surprises here though.
I was full of bullshit and bad dad jokes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday June 18 2024, @02:37PM
That's better than being full of two mini bad puns.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Monday June 17 2024, @08:36PM (12 children)
That is a bit vague? What harmful effect does it have?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 17 2024, @08:48PM (3 children)
>That is a bit vague?
Yep.
>What harmful effect does it have?
Well, that gets complicated, fast.
Lots of people have multiple redundant metabolic pathways for most functions, so when one doesn't work for some reason, you can soldier on with others.
But, with 8 billion people out there, what's harmless for most can be deadly or seriously debilitating for some.
Yes, it's vague, and more than vaguely disturbing.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by khallow on Tuesday June 18 2024, @05:37AM
Such as your posts? There's a reason we go with evidence for such things.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday June 18 2024, @09:50AM (1 child)
Religions are more concrete than this bullshit. if the scientists that spout this kind of hogwash hand wave any harder we could solve our energy problems by planting them in front of the wind turbines.
Get back to me when there's actual evidence, before I die from all of this microplastic in a couple decades.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 18 2024, @01:22PM
Careful what you wish for.
Religion is 100% social manipulation based on nothing but what society reacts to.
Bullshit hand waving science generally comes from scientists who believe something based on their experience and intuition plus a bit of evidence that is too small to say anything for sure.
Now, telling bullshit hand waving science apart from political manipulation science can be tricky, unless you know how to follow the money supporting the publications.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday June 17 2024, @10:00PM (5 children)
There's a recent regulatory paper here targeting South Korea that listed known affects of microplastics: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10151227/ [nih.gov]
The TL;DR is that microplastics literally tear through cell membranes and either outright kill the cells or lodge themselves in the cells much like a bullet. So, while there's plenty of qualifiers and quantifier to be had for toxicological modeling with respect to different kinds of microplastics and cells, the general answer to what kind of harmful effect they doi "all of it".
compiling...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 17 2024, @10:26PM (4 children)
Sounds vaguely like chemotherapy, maybe micro plastics are the cure for Cancer!!!
More likely, like chemo and radio and most other cancer treatments, they might make put some cancers into remission, while making you miserable and causing more cancers down the road.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday June 18 2024, @09:53AM (3 children)
I don't think chemo's half life is measured in the centuries...
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 18 2024, @01:25PM (2 children)
Both chemo and radiation therapy work by killing cells, they just kill the tumors faster than the non cancerous cells.
If micro plastics do the same, they could conceivably reduce cancer rates, unless they are causing more cancers than they are killing... That would be the road to untreatable super tumors.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday June 18 2024, @04:01PM (1 child)
Half life in pharmacology and toxicology refers to the elimination time. As in, unlike chemotherapy toxins which have around 24h half-life and a few weeks of recovery time, plastics can get stuck in your body permanently.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 18 2024, @09:25PM
Permanent cytotoxicity, drug companies hate this one simple trick! /s
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by epitaxial on Tuesday June 18 2024, @12:11AM (1 child)
It's difficult to say because scientists have been unable to find a person without detectable levels. So it might be causing many issues or none at all. But I'm sure it's fine.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by khallow on Tuesday June 18 2024, @05:39AM
Everything is detectable with fine enough instruments. This says more about the state of modern lab equipment than a legitimate concern.