If you think of having a spoonful of plastic in your nose sounds bad for you, you are not the only one. A recent study shows that microplastics can accumulate in the brain and scientists are sending alarms.
Researchers from the U.S. and Canada commented on Tuesday in the journal Brain Medicine. In addition to discussing recent brain research, they detail the overall science that shows that microplastics are harming the environment and our health. Scientists claim that while more research is needed to find the best way to remove these substances from our bodies, people can already take steps to minimize their exposure.
Microplastics are any plastic less than 5 mm. In recent years, scientists have found them almost anywhere they look—from the top clouds to our testicles to the poop of babies. But a study published in natural medicine last month in University of New Mexico researchers has sparked a wave of new attention.
UNM researchers not only found microplastics in the brains of deceased people, but also found that people have higher concentrations of plastic in their liver, kidneys, or other organs. More importantly, the recent deceased seemed to be much larger, suggesting that plastic exposure has only deteriorated recently. They also found that people with dementia have higher concentrations of plastic in their brains, perhaps indicating a link to fatal neurological disorders. UNM researchers estimate that today’s brains may carry these tiny pieces of a whole plastic spoon.
Nicholas Fabiano, lead author of The New Review, warned that we still don’t understand the health effects of microplastics. But what we have learned so far is not encouraging.
“It’s shocking to hear the value of microplastics with a spoon in the brain. As a psychiatry resident, this is particularly important because we don’t currently know that this may affect a person’s cognitive or mental health,” Fabiano, a researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Ottawa, told Gizmodo. “In natural medicine research, dementia patients have 3-5 times higher microplastic levels in brains, which can cause alarms, but these findings are not causal.”
Not only can plastics themselves be dangerous to our bodies, but their chemicals are also oozing out. Scientists have identified over a hundred chemicals in plastics that can harm us or other animals, especially those that can mimic and potentially disrupt the regulation of important hormones. These interfering chemicals are associated with higher incidence of infertility, some metabolic diseases such as cancer and diabetes. And, plastics or their chemicals can affect our health, so to make it worse, there are some other ways.
“The current evidence base (based primarily on animal and cell culture studies) shows that [microplastic] Exposure can have adverse health effects through oxidative stress, inflammation, immune dysfunction, altered biochemical/energy metabolism, impaired cell proliferation, abnormal organ development, metabolic pathways and carcinogenicity. ”
Fabiano notes that many unsolved issues regarding microplastics remain. Apart from unknown long-term health risks, we are not even sure how these plastics enter the brain. Although some studies have shown that we can sweat from certain plastic-related chemicals, how our bodies may rinse microplastics.
Despite these unknowns, Fabiano (and many other scientists) calls on governments and policy makers to take action and start reducing our collective exposure to microplastics. At the same time, people can also do things in their personal lives to limit their plastic intake. These include: converting from drinking bottled water regularly to filtered tap water; eating less foods usually made of plastic, like some tea bags (that is, some tea bags are better than others), or well-known foods containing high levels of microplastics such as seafood, alcohol and highly processed foods; and storing the remaining leftovers in glass or stainless steel containers rather than plastic containers.
