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Study Finds Microplastics in Nearly 90% of Proteins Sampled
- charliebwrites 3y agoSo what do we do about them? Is there any way to remove microplastics from a person/animal once already ingested? What technology if any is being worked on to help alleviate this?
- david422 3y agoHope we don't get cancer. Become vegetarian.
- stcg 3y agoI don't think becoming vegetarian helps. From the article: > The study found evidence that food processing is a likely source of microplastic contamination, as highly processed protein products (like fish sticks, chicken nuggets, tofu, and plant-based burgers, among others) contained significantly more microplastics per gram than minimally processed products (items like packaged wild Alaska pollock, raw chicken breast, and others). Note the tofu and plant-based burgers.
- ahoka 3y agoPlant based meat substitutes are vegan junk food. There are other things to eat that are not meat.
- dashundchen 3y agoIf you look at the actual data, tofu had the third lowest concentration of microplastic particles per gram (0.03, vs 0.02 for pork loin chop and 0.01 for whole chicken breast). The press release does a disservice to the study by referring to the highly processed group as a whole and not excluding tofu. For reference, the breaded shrimp and fish sticks were measured to have 1.2 and 0.26 particles per gram. Table 3.7 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749123022352?via%3Dihub#sec3 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026974912... Regardless if a processed food like tofu has minimal plastic concentration, I would assume minimally processed whole plant food like beans and nuts would also have low microplastic exposure. The study found little total plastic from packaging, their evidence pointed towards the processing.
- ericmcer 3y agoDid you account for calories? Beef has ~3-4X the calories per gram of tofu. I would guess plants have more microplastics as they just pull things out of the soil and store them (why many plants have a ton of heavy metals). Animals at least have some systems for filtering and processing unwanted items.
- epistasis 3y agoStop driving? Most microplastic in water come from tires. I've been trying to make small moves away from car infrastructure in my town and the response is, well, less than positive. We already tacitly accept that cars are one of the biggest causes of death. Reducing car infrastructure to reduce microplastics, where we don't even really know the harm, seems far far more challenging.
- anonymous_pro_ 3y agoWhat town is that? It seems like the success of diversifying away from cars depends on the place and how it grew. LA, for example, grew at the time of peak automobile infrastructure investment and it's basically unrecoverable at this point. There are probably other reasons why places like LA are so locked in to cars now, but that's the one that seems obvious to me.
- epistasis 3y agoIt's a town with one of the highest percentages of bike commuters in the state, actually. However there's also a regressive aspect that refuses to make any accommodations for anything except cars, and these people have veto power over non-car infrastructure. There is no built-in veto power for new car infrastructure, and in fact existing law requires car infrastructure as a base for any sort of building, for example parking minimums. Most of the city was built 1960-1980, so based on car designs. But it's small enough that small amounts of change would eliminate car dependence.
- Solvency 3y agoNot just tires. Your clothes being washed.
- tppiotrowski 3y agoI think of tires as being made of rubber. Where does the plastic come from?
- haltist 3y ago
- polski-g 3y agoIf you donate blood as soon as possible from your last blood donation (per federal regulations), you can remove 50% of your microplastic content per year. Some studies have also shown that going to saunas/sweat lodges also lower your microplastic content.
- charliebwrites 3y agoInteresting, so we’ve shown it’s possible to _sweat_ out micro plastics in a sauna?
- polski-g 3y agoThat is what the literature suggests, though it was a small n of 20. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22253637/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22253637/
- Solvency 3y agoIf this has been happening for decades, why are lifespans still increasing, why are average heights of new generations increasing, etc? I know PFAS are hormonal disrupters in research but it seems like most people are doing... just fine?
- Ryan_IRL 3y agoWe might be doing fine on average, despite it. Yet, there are seemingly links to autoimmune diseases and cancers, and still more research to do. So maybe a good % of the population could be doing more fine without the micro plastics?
- adamweld 3y agohttps://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab...
- chrisamiller 3y agoAre you claiming that declining fertility is due to plastic, rather than to increasing wealth, education of women, and access to contraception? If so, then I'm going to have to ask you for a) a source and b) a plausible mechanism.
- polski-g 3y agoFertility is collapsing in North Korea and Iran. So no, its not about any of those things.
- SoftTalker 3y agoCould be pervasive malnutrition, generally poor-to-nonexistent health care, and generally polluted environment.
- zug_zug 3y agoIt's entirely plausible. There's very strong evidence that both sperm counts and testosterone levels are going down (wikipedia it) worldwide over the last 60 years. The mechanism here would be that many plastics are or contain endocrine disruptors. Or just an unknown mechanism (there's just so much about biology we don't know). I believe there's also evidence that younger generations are having less sex. There's also a claim that people have much less "mature" (i.e. sexually-developed) facial features. Of course this could all be tested by a proper study. Now back to your point, your first reaction might be "All my friends aren't having kids because they don't want to, none are trying and can't." But if sex-drive is down across the board that may explain it. America doesn't even self-replace (unless you count new immigrants).
- badcarbine 3y ago[dead]
- stevenpetryk 3y agoFeels truly irreversible, save moving to a new earth.
- seydor 3y agolife adapts to plastic
- riku_iki 3y agoor maybe all species will start getting sick and die one day because of microplastics contamination. Some bacteria will survive.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoI think the idea we have this highly dense energy source pervasively available across the earth in all biomes with an exposed surface area that is unfathomable, life will adapt to consume that source of carbon rich energy. I suspect we may be bringing the end of the age of plastics rapidly.
- SteveNuts 3y agoAnd the lifecycle of the likely consumers of this energy source have much faster reproduction cycles, therefore faster ability to evolve to use this energy source. I'm very curious how we will protect against this, otherwise bacteria will eat away at our car dashboards and such.
- gigglesupstairs 3y agoIs there any research being done on how our bodies are “hopefully” learning to adapt to this omnipresence of plastics everywhere in and around us?
- ethanbond 3y agoPeople tend to care disproportionately about human life. We don’t actually know whether we’ll adapt at the pace required to overcome widespread plastic contamination (or really whether we even need to adapt). Policy-by-platitude is a bad strategy.
- philipkglass 3y agoThe article only reports number of microplastics without reporting mass. This is particularly difficult to interpret when fibers are responsible for so much of the total: Notably, across all samples, nearly half (44%) of the identified microplastics were fibers, which is consistent with other studies suggesting that fibers are the most prevalent form of microplastic in the environment. Are 4 fibers of 50 micron length 4 times more dangerous than one 200 micron long fiber? There's no discussion of it in the article, but reporting microplastics by number of countable particles carries that implication.
- tppiotrowski 3y agoI wonder how much of this stuff we inhale from our dryer exhaust when washing outdoor/athletic wear? I used the lint from my dryer as a fire-starter once and it definitely smelled like burning plastic.
- corytheboyd 3y agoI have done zero research, am not at all qualified to say any such things… but I feel like microplastics will eventually be looked back on the way we look back on asbestos today. “People used to throw PLASTIC in the ocean?!” We are in that awkward period of being aware, yet the damage has been done, so now we wait for the long-term effects to manifest. Again, probably wrong, not at all an opinion to be taken as fact, just a gut feeling. History tells us that there will at least be SOMETHING perceived as normal today that is later discovered to be not okay, anyway. Plastic, social media, hell, maybe even EV after 50 years of batteries rotting in landfills.
- epistasis 3y agoPerhaps, but we really don't know the harm. And if the exposure is as universal as it sounds, then we can place some upper bounds on the amount of harm. With asbestos, the exposure was somewhat limited, but had greater consewuences. With plastics, we are all getting it.
- ethanbond 3y agoWhat upper bounds? One of the higher-confidence hypotheses of the effects of plastic contamination is reproductive disruption. Since these plastics bioaccumulate and pass from mother to child, there’s reason to worry about intergenerational accrual of reproductive damage. So as far as I can tell, the “upper bound” of harm is reproductive collapse of our species?
- thereddaikon 3y ago>What upper bounds? Well we know it isn't acutely toxic because people aren't just dropping dead inexplicably. And we know it isn't drastically raising cancer rates because, again those haven't inexplicably shot up.
- ethanbond 3y ago> people aren't just dropping dead inexplicably Another pretty decent hypothesis of plastic contamination's effects is obesity (it's been seen both in vitro and in non-human animals). People absolutely are dropping dead en masse of obesity and related complications, and while obesity is proximally explainable (calories), the explanation of why people are consuming so many more calories is contested, at best. So I don't think we know enough to say confidently that people aren't just dropping dead inexplicably.
- tmccrary55 3y agoMakes me think of scifi. What if there's some kind of plastic cliff that most species in the universe don't survive? We worry about virus epidemics, global warming, asteroids, etc.
- Arrath 3y agoFitting venue for the "two astronauts, always has been" genre of meme.
- ProfessorLayton 3y ago>Notably, across all samples, nearly half (44%) of the identified microplastics were fibers, which is consistent with other studies suggesting that fibers are the most prevalent form of microplastic in the environment. Seems like one could live on a vegan diet and still be consuming a lot of plastic fiber. My favorite blankets, rugs, and t-shirts are all 100% polyester. Even if I managed to use avoid plastics at home, plastic lint is everywhere in public too.
- jwells89 3y agoAvoiding synthetics in clothing is indeed difficult. I buy 100% natural fibers where I can, but sadly often the best one can do is ~90% natural ~10% synthetic.
- somewhereoutth 3y ago100% cotton would seem to be widely available? Certainly for shirts, t-shirts, jumpers, trousers, socks. I don't wear anything other than cotton really for those items. For some reason they have started putting stretchy stuff into cotton jeans - maybe style, or maybe (my pet theory) that good quality cotton is no longer economic for jean production, and so they have to use rougher cotton, which needs the stretchy stuff to be comfortable enough to wear.
- HEmanZ 3y agoI think the jeans thing is just because most people want their jeans to feel and stretch like yoga pants and not jeans. The selvedge denim cult still is usually 100% cotton, and about the same price as stretchy designer jeans, but most people don’t want this.
- Maken 3y ago100% cotton shirts and pants are not that rare.
- TSiege 3y agoAn even stranger but annoying problem is even if you buy 100% cotton, the stitching is usually a polyester. It is difficult to buy cotton threads for home sewing
- rhplus 3y agoCan someone ELI5 this for me: how would microplastics passing through a digestive system end up in "proteins*"? Are they being stored directly in the fats, within cells, between muscle fibers...? (* the article seems to be using the term "protein" in the culinary sense, not the molecular sense).
- toomuchtodo 3y agoYou know how mercury bioaccumulates up the food chain? It looks like microplastics are similar [1] [2], and they are everywhere in the food web [3]. It's even in the bottled water [4]. [1] https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/08/30/microplastics-could-be-widespread-in-organs-and-impact-behaviour-new-study-suggests https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/08/30/microplastics-could... [2] https://www.uri.edu/news/2023/08/microplastics-infiltrate-all-systems-of-body-cause-behavioral-changes/ https://www.uri.edu/news/2023/08/microplastics-infiltrate-al... [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=microplastics&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38917410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38917410 (edit: yes, yes, no surprise it's in the bottled water, maybe we shouldn't be selling bottled water if it's full of microplastics? Less bottled water, more water dispensers everywhere)
- everdrive 3y agoIt's _especially_ in the bottled water.
- louthy 3y ago> It's even in the bottled water The bottled water that comes in plastic bottles? Not that surprising?
- b112 3y agoOh no. They're going to take my bagged milk away. https://www.tvo.org/article/think-bagged-milk-is-weird-think-again https://www.tvo.org/article/think-bagged-milk-is-weird-think... When I was a kid, many had their lunch sandwiches in a re-used milk bag too. And you can use the empty bags to store other stuff in the fridge. Are you going to take a big milk jug, or a cardboard milk container, and use it like a sandwich bag? It's so useful. It's the perfect way to get milk. PERFECT. And now.. this.
- jampekka 3y agoPlastics, let alone microplastics, are a rather small problem that seem to get a lot of airspace. There are no established health effects of microplastics. There are magnitudes worse health problems in e.g. both under and overnutrition that cause a lot less panic and fuss. https://www.undp.org/kosovo/blog/microplastics-human-health-how-much-do-they-harm-us https://www.undp.org/kosovo/blog/microplastics-human-health-...
- CharlesW 3y ago> There are no established health effects of microplastics. It'd be more true to say, "There are no established significant health effects of microplastics on humans." FWIW, the article you linked to doesn't say "no effects", but "limited evidence for significant adverse health impacts". This seems concerning: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9885170/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9885170/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- appplication 3y agoWhen reading research papers, ‘significant’ is usually meant to mean ‘statistically correlated’ which varies from our typical lay definition of ‘very impactful’, which would be described using the term ‘effect size’
- broscillator 3y agoA lot of issues like you mention can be a big problem on the population level, but not in an individual level if you're conscious of what you eat. This doesn't seem to be the case with microplastics, they seem to be in everything. You might call it panic to minimize it, and you'd be right to do so if we here were in charge of nutrition for a population; but I'm guessing most of us are in charge of our own nutrition and maybe a family's, so the information to deal with that is pretty valuable.
- s1gnp0st 3y agoThis is an outright lie. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35399297/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35399297/
- thereddaikon 3y agoHave we been able to link any real harm to microplastics? I know it sounds bad intuitively. But can we draw a link to any diseases? What if this just amounts to fear mongering?
- haltist 3y agoChildren are now born with plastic in their veins so we'll know soon enough what happens to these children based on their health outcomes.
- thereddaikon 3y agoWe've had mass use plastic for decades. Baby boomers were likely born with plastic in their veins. I certainly was.
- haltist 3y agoYou have a blood sample analysis indicating that's the case?
- thereddaikon 3y agoNo but that's a silly standard. I can't go back in time and blood test my infant self. We have microplastics everywhere because of their widespread use. That's been occurring for a few generations now. There is no rational reason to think that we only accumulated them when we first noticed them. No the rational explanation is its been that way as long as we've been mass exposing ourselves to plastics which is right around the end of the second world war. And if car tires are as big of a contributor as some studies indicate then its been even longer because vulcanized rubber is a prewar invention.
- haltist 3y agoThen there is nothing to worry about because everything since WW2 has been fine as far as cognition and general health is concerned. Although, IQs and sperm quality have been declining for a while now but it's probably unrelated to all the plastic pollution.
- bowmessage 3y agoIf, like me, your first question was "Which protein should I eat more of to avoid microplastics?", you can find the study's results graphed here: https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0269749123022352-gr2_lrg.jpg https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S02697491230223...
- evrimoztamur 3y agoThe graph makes sense to me, processed (plant-based or factory-breaded) and shrimp seem to be the main ones. Buy fresh and you’ll be alright is what I read from this.
- ComplexSystems 3y agoI sometimes have this feeling that in the future, when all of the science on this stuff is well established, our future enlightened society will simply take the view that plastic is poisonous. I think it'll be the same way that we think of lead, mercury, etc: like "wash your hands if you touch the stuff" levels of poisonous. I would not be surprised if society makes this shift in the next 20-30 years. Some of the recent results are really nuts: - You eat a credit card sized amount of plastic every week: https://nautil.us/you-eat-a-credits-card-worth-of-plastic-every-week-17950/ https://nautil.us/you-eat-a-credits-card-worth-of-plastic-ev... - 93% of bottled water has plastic in it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16793888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16793888 - Plastic containers, even "safe" ones, release plastic into food: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36532812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36532812 - Car tires are depositing plastic everywhere, including oceans: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37726539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37726539 It goes on and on. There are studies showing it gets into the placenta, harms animals, affects behavior, stays in your system forever, bioaccumulates all the way up the food chain and makes its way into every organ, and so on. This is all within the last few years. It seems like bottled water is a vector for this stuff very similar to lead pipes, and tires are a vector similar to leaded gasoline, and that the evidence is basically all there and all that is needed is a big epidemiological "smoking gun" study to put it all together. Of course not every single thing one could possibly call "plastic" need be equally unsafe. Probably some better plastic will be devised which is safer for use in tires and etc. Still, I think there will be a society-wide push against so-called "plastic", in general. People will probably push to replace everything made of plastic with something else: replacing saran wrap with parchment paper, Tupperware with glass, etc. I'm not super interested in defending this rigorously as it's really just a hunch, but I'm curious if this is what happens.
- serf 3y ago> I sometimes have this feeling that in the future, when all of the science on this stuff is well established, our future enlightened society will simply take the view that plastic is poisonous. I think it'll be the same way that we think of lead, mercury, etc I don't. The effects of lead or mercury poisoning are fast-acting and obvious. All the links you provided talk about the release of plastics into the world, but the details on how that affects things are sketchier than say , mercury poisoning , because the symptoms are slowly accruing and ambiguous compared to lots of other environmental contaminants. I agree we should do something about it.
- lgleason 3y agoOn one hand, plastic reduces weight, transportation costs and the costs of things and is more versatile. On the other hand it causes another form of pollution. Modern life would be very different without plastic.
- rdsubhas 3y agoInstead of looking for evidence of consumption risk at current/past levels — it would be good to know: what is the threshold of continuous daily ingestion beyond which microplastics are harmful. The answer can't be infinity of course, so it would be worth finding the threshold, and then how far we're off from that threshold based on current growth. Not suggesting to have humans consume concentrated concoctions of plastics, but however ethically science allows.