The original paper about microplastics in the brain seems to have a serious methodological flaw that undermines the conclusion that our brains are swimming in microplastics.
“False positives of microplastics are common to almost all methods of detecting them,” Jones says. “This is quite a serious issue in microplastics work.”
Brain tissue contains a large amount of lipids, some of which have similar mass spectra as the plastic polyethylene, Wagner says. “Most of the presumed plastic they found is polyethylene, which to me really indicates that they didn’t really clean up their samples properly.” Jones says he shares these concerns.
This is from other microplastics researchers. See this article. So before we panic about this, let’s wait for some independent replication and more agreement in the scientific community.
Microplastics are a serious concern, and we need to deal with plastic pollution. Let’s just stick to high quality science while we do that.
Thank you for the nuance. Bad data and hyperbole doesn’t help what I agreed is a serious issue.
I don’t think this is the kind of neuroplasticity we’re supposed to be aiming for.
So what? We all have to make a bit of sacrifice to maximize shareholder value. Stop whining about it!
Tap for spoiler
/s
lets sacrifice shareholders for value instead
wow! I’m glad you did the /s I am incapable of parsing sarcasm due to my plastic induced retardation on Reddit
Instead I have to make aggressive snarky comments with slurs because I have to engage and create rage bait, due to my social media induced rate addiction
ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
A relative bright spot amidst a sea of bad news:
"Bottled water alone can expose people to nearly as many microplastic particles annually as all ingested and inhaled sources combined,” said Brandon Luu, an Internal Medicine Resident at the University of Toronto. “Switching to tap water could reduce this exposure by almost 90%, making it one of the simplest ways to cut down on microplastic intake.”
Dunno if anyone reading this is still drinking bottled water, but, uh, now you have another reason to not do that.
Would my plastic water bottle (reusable) be a problem?
Yes but to a much lesser extent. The act of merely breaking the seal on the cap injects a lot of plastic into the liquid, so skipping that has to count for something
Honestly, I’m not saying that you’re lying but that’s very hard to accept as truth. Would you have a good source for learning about all this?
You’re right, I misremembered It’s not just about breaking the seal on the cap, the mere friction of the cap on the bottle adds the bulk of microplastics found within
I was thinking of an article from years ago where they were talking about macro plastics nearly visible to the eye getting into the liquid from breaking the seal. Can’t seem to find it now though
Thanks that’s very useful and good to know.
The thing is that most of our piping is plastic. So how is tap water so much better?
On average, disposable plastic bottles shed microplastics much more prolifically than plastic water piping.
They won’t think it was suicide if I keep drinking bottled water.
This would mean any liquid in plastic is a large source. Bottled water has other options, not so much the rest. I mean they could have different packaging and some do, but cost is a reason plastic is primarily used.
glass bottled soda > canned soda > plastic contained soda or fountain drinks
… maybe we will end up with a bottlecap psuedo currency after all.
Especially things with carbonic or citric acid are probably even worse here
Edit: and we need to keep in mind, the aluminium cans also have a plastic liner inside. So those probably aren’t better either…
Shit thing, that glass is so heavy to move around.
And pretty much everything is stored in large plastic containers during production, until it’s filled into whatever.Not sure how we can actually get around this.
The best thing we can do, is probably just reducing the plastic intake, by avoiding plastic bottles, as they are much more prone to decay due to UV light and long term storage.But well, I guess, we’re fucked here as well
I got a soda stream with glass bottles. You can make soda from fruit (lemons and oranges are especially delicious - plus I can control whatever sweetener I use). Also, if you really want cola, then you can get concentrated syrup so there’s less plastic and liquid transport overall.
Scary. Is plastic more or less expensive than cardboard/paper? I’m not sure if it’s where I live, but I’ve noticed that during my childhood, (example) most takeout containers would be either foil or paper. Now, most of them are plastic, even the cups that contain sauces. I don’t get why plastic has been embraced so much when the alternatives were far easier to recycle.
Plastic is generally cheaper; for a while there was a misguided push against using paper/cardboard because sAvE tHe TrEeS
Plastic also has the benefit that it’s really easy to make in whatever shape with injection molding, and is totally permanent, which if you don’t care about disposal is great.
Meanwhile, making stuff out of a sheet of paper is a manufacturing challenge that has resulted in creative solutions like corrugation, and the container might seep through or soften or something.
There’s a thing called extended producer responsibility which basically is the idea of making disposal not free anymore for the manufacturer.
permenent? can’t plastic get melted down and recycled again?
once i put some plastic container in the dishwasher and it got too hot, it kind of melted a bit. it didn’t totally melt but the lid doesn’t fit anymore.
i dunno if it was injection molded though
Not very well. Those long molecules break down into shorter segments every time they’re recycled, which makes for an inferior and eventually useless product. Some plastics are also thermoset and can’t ever be melted again, and some are just hard to recycle for other reasons and get picked out and landfilled. The whole idea of plastics recycling is basically greenwashing on a massive scale; the industry put a lot of money into promoting it to avoid scrutiny.
That being said, they’re also permanent in the good way. Plastics don’t biodegrade or erode. If you bury a plastic pipe in the ground, it may well still be there and intact in a million years. Anything natural will rot long before that, common metals will corrode, and concrete usually has metal rebar inside that pulls it apart as it corrodes. Plastic is also lightweight, which ceramics (stone-like materials) and metals are not, while still being strong under tension like metals.
Sunlight does slowly break down many plastics, but only into ever-smaller particles, which is where the microplastics in OP come from.
oh wow, i didn’t realize that, i thought it was infinitely reusable just by melting and re-forming it. thank you really much for the explanation.
what you wrote reminded me of silly putty, it’s really stretchy and elastic to start with, but if you play with it for a while, it starts to be less elastic and breaks apart.
does metal also break down? i’m thinking about like aluminium cans that are used for soda and stuff like that
Nope, metals are elements as opposed to molecule compounds and literally can be melted and cast forever. They say most of the gold ever mined is still in use today, so your modern ring might have bits of a ring melted down in ancient Egypt in it. Glass is like this too. Paper is more like plastic, albeit somewhat biodegradable when it eventually has to be thrown out.
In practice, there’s still a limit for many metals because they will get contaminated. Copper building up in scrap steel is a problem IIRC. It’s not a big issue with aluminum, though, unless you’re doing something like building an airplane where you need super high purity. Cans are almost all recycled into more cans.
There are ways to purify a metal melt, but they can be expensive and usually produce waste slag. I’ve never heard of glass being purified; it’s probably too cheap to not just make more of, since it’s derived from really common minerals.
thank you for the explanation, it was really interesting and in-depth! you should be a teacher!
Thanks! I’m not sure I have the same presence IRL, haha.
A lot of metals are fairly easy to recycle. For others, being alloys (basically a mix of various metals in varying quantities), it’s more tricky as you can’t always really get a pure product out of recycling very easily, so it limits the types of things you can do with them. But all in all it’s way better than with plastics.
Was this writen by AI?
The researchers found surprisingly high levels of microplastics in the brain tissue. The concentration of plastics in the brain was much greater than that found in the liver or kidney samples. It was also higher than levels previously reported in placentas and testes. The median amount of total plastics for 2024 brain samples was 4917 micrograms per gram, and for 2016 samples, it was 3345 micrograms per gram. For comparison, the 2024 liver and kidney samples were 433 and 404 micrograms per gram, respectively.
Even more concerning was the finding that the amount of plastic in the brain was increasing over time. Brain tissue samples from 2024 had significantly higher levels of microplastics than samples from 2016, representing an approximate 50% increase in just eight years.
Isn’t that the same information just repeated after each other?
To measure the microplastics, the researchers first chemically dissolved the tissue. This created a liquid mixture. They then spun this mixture at very high speeds in a machine called a centrifuge. This process separated out any undissolved materials, including plastics, into a small pellet. Next, they heated this pellet to a very high temperature (600 degrees Celsius), a process that breaks down the plastic.
Why does this sound like somebody explaining this to a 10 year old?
Yes, it is. Probably a few phrases written by a human and then a summary of the article with AI.
I can feel it
plastic pilled micro-maxxer
I am longing for plastic-eating bacteria to be released into the wild. There are other materials we can use.
Like what? If you’re building an airplane or a sewer main all substitutes are inferior. The problem is that we’re using the ultra-permanent wonder material for, like, candy wrappers.
I would like for you to meet my friend, the oyster mushroom. I’m wondering what level of soil accumulation we need to support massive, city-wide oyster mushroom blooms
Yes, I am sure such a bacteria being released at this scale would have absolutely zero negative consequences
As opposed to the alternative?
implying there are only two possible options that could ever be imagined is not interesting
I’m a Barbie girl, in the Barbie world
Life in plastic, it’s fantasticWho would have guessed that song was an apocalyptic warning
On the contrary, who didn’t?
Were the Nazi rumors about them widespread back then?
Not really. I found it quite ominous never the less
Let me share with you unique kind of emotions:) (I mean this in good faith)
non-native English speakers. It’s actually a distinct source of getting astonished: grow up with some English songs around, love them for their melody and whatnot, then learn some English, then actually listen to or read the lyrics, and… oh, damn. So many things come out in totally different light
This is why I do the following once per fortnight:
- Obtain 1 liter of pharmaceutical-grade acetone.
- Heat the acetone to 150C to sterilize it.
- Cover the acetone with a sterile cover and let it cool to room temperature.
- While the acetone is cooling, drill a small hole in skull with a heat-sterilized drill bit. (Or re-use previously drilled skull port.)
- Once cooled, using a large syringe, inject 1 liter of sterile acetone directly into skull.
- Shake head around for 2 minutes, let sit for 30 minutes.
- After 30 minutes, attach new sterile needle to syringe and insert into skull port.
- Withdraw 1 liter of fluid from skull.
Acetone will dissolve the microplastics inside your brain. Afterwards, the resulting solution can simply be syringed out and discarded. Alternately, the resulting solution can be recycled as an effective paint thinner.
/s (This WOULD remove microplastics from your brain, but it would also mean you wouldn’t have to worry about microplastics at all, on the account of simply being dead.)
He believes that food, especially meat, is the primary source of microplastics entering the body, as commercial meat production tends to accumulate plastic particles within the food chain.
“The way we irrigate fields with plastic-contaminated water, we postulate that the plastics build up there,” Campen said. “We feed those crops to our livestock. We take the manure and put it back on the field, so there may be a sort of feed-forward biomagnification.”
Go vegan, I guess?
Yes, and:
“Bottled water alone can expose people to nearly as many microplastic particles annually as all ingested and inhaled sources combined,” said Brandon Luu, an Internal Medicine Resident at the University of Toronto. “Switching to tap water could reduce this exposure by almost 90%, making it one of the simplest ways to cut down on microplastic intake.”
I think that’s mostly an issue in America. Here in Europe you can always drink tap water.
I am so glad I didn’t bring any children into this world.
For real. And now I feel like people are either extremely stupid or just monsters for having kids.
Humanity is wasted. Its wild that I think I might actually favor a humanity ending natural disaster over continuing whatever the fuck humans are doing now.
Edgy…
Despite having no desire to have kids, I’d much rather be born today than pretty much any time before the last few generations.
That’s the point I’m making, it’s not about YOU, you are not the child being born. Your opinion doesn’t matter to the kid being born.
That really depends on where you were born and what status you were born into. You could be born into a lot of places today that you would starve or live under miserable conditions.
Plastic has been the best and worst invention in human existence. We need a replacement for this asap.
We should start by subsidizing plant based materials instead of oil based. We’re literary paying extra to make more plastic.
