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Microplastics block blood flow in the brain, mouse study reveals
- harimau777 2y agoIs there a viable way to actually avoid microplastics?
- lm28469 2y agoYou can reduce the exposure but I doubt you can eliminate it. Live far away from roads, live outside of cities, avoid all plastic containers for water/food, avoid synthetic clothes/bed sheets/towels/&c.
- SecretDreams 2y ago"Live far away from roads" I guess it's microplastics for me
- blagie 2y agoOr HEPA filters in every room. I've felt better ever since covid made these omnipresent where I live.
- indoordin0saur 2y agoCries in New York accent
- jaapz 2y agoSo I guess it depends on your definition of "viable"
- Zealotux 2y agoI've been trying to avoid them and it's though. I use glass water bottles, ideally would prefer something like reverse osmosis but not so practical. Remove as much plastic as possible in your daily life: clothes, food containers, bed sheets, etc. Don't eat food that came to contact with plastics and certainly don't eat up food in plastic containers. Vacuum regularly, use a HEPA filtering system to reduce harmful particles in the air, not much you can do when you're outside, living far from roads could help (a significant amount of microplastics comes from car tires, apparently).
- eudhxhdhsb32 2y ago> ideally would prefer something like reverse osmosis but not so practical Just curious why that is? I was going to buy one for my new house and they seem pretty practical, at least for drinking water at home.
- Zealotux 2y agoI live in a small place that I rent so I don't have so much space for the system, but if you have the space for it I would say it's worth it! I would also love to have RO for my shower but I haven't found a solution for that.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dyauspitr 2y agoThe RO filtration membrane is also made of plastic. I haven’t found a way to avoid microplastics even though I have my own well and have an RO system.
- Zealotux 2y agoYou're correct, your RO system should reduce the amount of microplastics significantly though, to a point that makes your water much safer than most common options.
- dyauspitr 2y agoMaybe? You’re literally forcing water under high pressure across a plastic membrane, to me it feels like that would add a tremendous amount of microplastics to the water. I don’t know what the answer is though since I can’t seem to find any real studies around this.
- PaulKeeble 2y agoFFP3 and N95 masks will stop micro and nano plastics but the issue is its polypropylene, so the question becomes how much it sheds verses how much it blocks. Most of the PM2.5/10 tests against these masks shows they are better than outside air but I don't think the exact composition is fully understood. Based on how its sort blown molten fibres I suspect it sheds quite large bits of plastic if it does.
- butchkass 2y agoJoining the Amish ? But they’re finding microplastics in the air at 5000m of altitude, as well as in the blood of fetuses, so even them are probably contaminated. I think the only things one can do at this point is avoiding the worse sources of microplastics, e.g. heating food in plastic containers
- bilekas 2y agoIt's pretty much impossible to completely avoid microplastics. They're literally raining down on us at this stage. But it's parts per millions to consider. I remember seeing a video about how all gortex and basically all waterproof great releases microplastics into the environment and then the rain basically carries it everywhere. If I find it ill post it.
- stevenwoo 2y agoAll synthetic clothing material sheds stuff constantly from abrasion and in much larger quantities when washing and drying.
- e40 2y agoThis https://youtu.be/-ht7nOaIkpI?si=avIcOa76alLdbAqo https://youtu.be/-ht7nOaIkpI?si=avIcOa76alLdbAqo ?
- bilbo0s 2y agoTires as well. People think in terms of food packaging, and they certainly should. But the danger is actually everywhere in our modern life. The cars, the homes, the clothes, the food, the phones, the computers, the blankets, the sheets, the carpet, and so on and so forth.
- bilekas 2y agoIt's a good point. As much of a miracle as rubbers and plastics have been.. There is a downside. A revolutionary innovation/invention would be some kind of passive cleaning system..
- gwbas1c 2y agoI started taking tea out of plastic teabags and dumping it into a tea sock.
- PaulKeeble 2y agoYou can buy loose tea and get metal tea stirrers that contain it which is about the best way to avoid the plastic. Still comes sealed in a plastic bag though, its very hard to avoid plastics at all.
- gwbas1c 2y agoBut the tea that I like only comes in plastic tea bags!
- thatguy0900 2y agoI've read regular blood donations can reduce microplastics at least somewhat, and that's a good thing to do anyway
- butchkass 2y agoPeople in a few decades will think we were crazy for packaging 100% of our food in plastic, the same way we think putting asbestos everywhere was crazy back then. The amount of strokes and aneurysms that are gonna happen in 20~50 years is gonna be truly fantastic.
- awestroke 2y agoPeople in a few decades may have too much microplastics in their brain for such thoughts
- 9283409232 2y agoIt does make me wonder how many strokes or aneurysms in otherwise healthy people can be attributed to plastics. We don't have the data for that but maybe random aneurysms aren't so random after all?
- ImHereToVote 2y agoWe didn't. The experts did.
- bilbo0s 2y agoNot even the experts, the MBAs did. Then the JDs did the lobbying to make sure government agencies were powerless to stop them. In reality, there was not a single "expert" in the room. In fact, if you were "expert" in any field other than business or law, you were very likely removed as a candidate to even be one of the people chosen to be in the room long ago.
- lm28469 2y agoTry to wipe your mind and walk in a supermarket as if you've never been in one, nothing makes sense whatsoever. Same for roads in the cities, endless streams of 2000kg+ hunk of steel, plastic and glass, 95% of them transport about 80kg of human, 95% of the time they're just parked taking space for no reason. Most things we designed are just so fucking inefficient and borderline insane, humans are very adaptable and if you're born in this mess it just seems normal
- userbinator 2y agoHave not read the full article but I suspect the dosing and size are unrealistically high. Smaller particles resulted in fewer obstructions ...and that suggests the whole "nanoplastics" scare is another stupidity which is a moot point anyway because monomers and short-chain polymers are very reactive and unlikely to even persist for long.
- drawkward 2y agoThis winter was very cold here in my city, but that doesn't mean the planet isn't heating up...
- sigtstp 2y agoThat was my suspicion as well. This is outside my area of expertise, but from what I can tell the dosing isn't (multiple) orders of magnitude larger. From the article, they mention about 4 times higher dosing than detected in humans when the MPs enter through medical supplies (including through surgery). - "about 12 μg of MPs [microplastics] per milliliter of blood have been detected in human blood. [prev studies mentioned above]" (I haven't read those references, though, just going off a quick skim) - "We would like to bring mouse blood MPs to this level by injection." - "the diluted final concentration after entering the bloodstream should be blood of about 50 μg/mL" [sic] A quick search for levels detected in humans led me to this paper [1] that gives 1.84 - 4.65 μg/mL, though with "a mean particle length of 127.99 ± 293.26 µm (7-3000 µm), and a mean particle width of 57.88 ± 88.89 µm (5-800 µm)." compared to uniform 5-μm-diameter microsphere used in the submitted article. So the mouse dosing is (compared to humans): - 4 times higher than contamination through medical interventions (if i understand correctly) - 15 times higher than normal contamination (only based on the one article) So higher, for sure, but still rather close in cases with a lot of contamination. Not sure how the particle size factors into it [1] Microplastics in human blood: Polymer types, concentrations and characterisation using μFTIR https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2024.108751 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2024.108751 EDIT: formatting and rephrasing
- pulvinar 2y agoThis appears to be a poorly done study-- they're showing the mechanical effect of possible blockage, but they haven't shown that microplastics here are any different than particles of other inert substances found in our environment: clays, silt, organic debris, etc. Those have always been in our drinking water and the immune system deals with what gets into us.
- drawkward 2y agoThe fact that they have always been around suggest that there is no change to us as a result of their introduction. Plastics, however, have not always been around...
- pulvinar 2y agoThe question is are microplastics doing anything different in this case. The study shows that microplastics may block. It doesn't show that micro-natural-substances may not also block. I'd like to see more actual science, and less fear mongering.
- drawkward 2y agoI understand your claim; so we have lived forever with a baseline stroke risk (maybe zero) that is attributable to these microparticles. The addition of plastics, because they may block, will not certainly lower our baseline risk, and may (as this evidence suggests) increase it.
- butchkass 2y agoI’d argue that’s just shifting the burden of proof. I’d like corporations to prove that something isn’t dangerous before they put it in the food I eat. Besides, if other microparticles are dangerous, I’d rather not have even more of those, especially ones that haven’t been through thousands of years of human evolution.
- 1970-01-01 2y agoMechanically, how could this make any difference whatsoever?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sagebird 2y agoi wouldn’t be surprised if many insults to human health are not relevant in population that exercises vigorously 5 times a week and have good body composition. for the average american maybe we are looking for straws that break camels backs that are on the edge of breaking anyways