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Comment by tomalaci | Hacker News Reader

We will need to find methods of removing micro and nanoplastics from our bodies. We are already ingesting them from multiple sources. There is already research about bad effects on male sperm quality [1], DNA damage [2] and more. By the time we clean up this stuff (if ever) in our products and services humanity will already have large concentrations of plastics in them.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7967748/

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7936647/

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Regularly donating blood or plasma can reduce PFAS concentrations in the body, I believe the effect is the same on microplastics https://theconversation.com/new-evidence-shows-blood-or-plas...

You mean bloodletting, because you can't use the blood for others.

I don't think anyone would mind taking on some pfas or microplastics from a donor if they're about to bleed out. There are always priorities.

Especially since we all have PFAS and microplastics in us at this point. There is no PFAS- and microplastics-free blood.

If all donated blood was screened for trace microplastics, I think we’d have an immediate and total donor blood shortage.

Super interesting. But is the blood then cleaned of them, or is this kind of like giving your plastics to someone else? :/

If I was in a need of a blood transfusion I think I’m OK with there being a normal amount of nanoplastics in them.

nit, but this is usually accomplished with plasma donation (plasmapheresis) rather than blood donation. You can donate plasma much more frequently (2x/week) vs blood (once per 2 months), thought the volume taken for each is roughly similar.

The filters used must be a specific size, so how micro, are micro plastics? If they keep breaking into smaller pieces, wouldn't they be cell sized too? And thus, pass cell sized filters?

They don't filter the plasma, they remove it and replace with some other substance depending in your condition and risk profile.

You have to filter whole blood, to get plasma.

So you filter out the blood cells (45% of volume), toss the plasma (55% of volume) and return blood cells + clean plasma. Any substances the plasma are gone. So this is useful to the extent that the substances you care about are free in plasma. At least in the case of PFAS ("forever chemicals") that seems to be the case, see "Effect of Plasma and Blood Donations on Levels of Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances in Firefighters in Australia", which found that 52 weeks of plasma donation reduced PFAS blood levels by ~30%. This was more effective than blood donation, which reduced levels by 10% and 0% depending on the specific substances you look at.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

If there are microplastics the size of blood cells (this is a range, as cells are differing sizes), how do you filter for blood cells only?

You can dual filter, smaller and larger than, but you'd still have plastics.

Ah, I see, sorry for missing your point. In the paper they injected particles of size "9.55 µm, 1.14 µm, 0.293 µm", and it looks like a red blood cell is 8um. So a purely mechanical filter that got red blood cells would retain the largest of those particles but potentially not the rest. But plasmapheresis uses a combination of centrifugal separation and filters so may be more or less effective than that depending on the properties of the cells and plastics.

Ah! I was not aware that more than filters were being used. This could certainly help.

Thanks

If I was in a situation where I needed emergency blood, the level of microplastics in it is the least of my concerns.

“Excuse me, did this blood come from a vegan? I couldn’t possibly accept blood that isn’t 100% organic, free range, and —-“ (transcript ends, patient died)

Or get a shit ton of labs done

The only feasible way I see for removal is via donation or some form of hemodialysis. As the saying goes, the solution for pollution is dilution (or at least in the medical sense!)

How about regular whole blood donations?

This comes up time and time again. I'd feel worse giving someone else toxic blood that can't be fully filtered.

Why isn't blood letting mentioned more?

You don't need to feel guilty. Microplastics are pervasive to the point where everybody already has them in their blood, so people receiving blood with them in it are getting any noticeably net harm done to them. If you're in need of a blood transfusion the alternative is usually death, so all things considering maintaining the status quo of microplastic levels already in you isn't the worst thing ever.

But will the shareholders be happy with all the stuff that needs to be done.

What method could possibly exist that would remove threads of plastic embedded in tissue? Sounds incredibly invasive no matter what i.e a no-go. Don't plan for this stuff to somehow magically remove itself, plan on ingesting small enough amounts in your lifetime to render it a non-issue. If modern life is making that impossible then demand a better modern existence. If that's not possible to make society change for the better (I have my doubts) then accept your fate nobody said life would be fair, perhaps take up religion.

It's hard to say what methods will work, but it's not hard to imagine possibilities - a bacteria or virus (or even a nanobot someday?!) could be discovered / created that eats plastic but does no harm to a human body (or minimal harm that doesn't matter and can easily be removed/killed once it's got all the plastic) - see for example [1] & [2] different types of recently found plastic-eating bacteria for inspiration (the two bacteria types were found to eat different specific types of plastic, I'm not sure if they've tested each on all types of plastic or just published the first known).

Or maybe we discover some sort of light/sound/other wave/something that, like an x-ray, has low enough health risks to be worth sometimes putting through humans, but that somehow does something to plastic that will let the body dispose of it all?

Or maybe some drug gets created that somehow turns on some bodily function that can handle the plastic problem.

Or.... I don't know, I'm no expert, but I bet there's more possibilities.

Of course, would be good to do our best to reduce plastic use altogether anyway, for environmental as well as health reasons!

[1] https://interestingengineering.com/science/bacteria-really-c...

[2] https://www.livescience.com/plastic-eating-bacteria

I love how the solution is to perhaps put nanobots in my brain or just some virus into my brain, this is top tier stuff.

Assume magic cow.

Engineered antibodies or possibly mRNA vaccine, maybe. Monoclonal antibodies would likely be too expensive for use as a purely ameliorative measure. But if we figure out how to fold proteins on demand, then we can express a sequence and make it like other biologics. That's still a very expensive proposition, but at least it would have economies of scale. Avoidance is the best medicine for sure.

Remember, Morgellon’s is a fictitious disease.

I’m not a biologist, but AFAIK just stopping new plastics inflow should be enough. The body continuously produces new cells to renew itself, including blood cells and what not, and this new material is plasticless.

Don’t take new plastic, and in a few years you should be good.

The problem is that the plastic is not removed. Kind of the same thing as people having shrapnel or bullets lodged in them for life - while your cells regenerate, the object remains and still interacts with you.

Shrapnel or bullets are large objects and obviously the body can’t get rid of them.

Nanoplastic circulates in the bloodstream which is continuously refreshed, or sits somewhere in the cells which are continuously disposed of.

Some toxins or heavy metals can accumulate in bones, but I’m not sure if plastic can do that.

Thanks for clarifying!

Care to provide a source? Everything I've ever read says large pieces of plastic are sometimes eliminated during defecation but anything else sticks around forever.

> What method could possibly exist that would remove threads of plastic embedded in tissue?

macrophages breaking their bonds? (I'm not sure...that's a question)

Is this going to end up with a mega lawsuit?

I mean look at lead.

If knowledge intent is found.

Probably not.

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