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whimsicalism

in terms of microplastics in our bodies, is there actually any evidence these are harmful?

i know intuitively they would be, but i haven’t actually found good evidence when i’ve gone searching

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There was a recent study [1] that found they could dramatically raise the risk of adverse cardiovascular events

[1]. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/06/microsco...

Sounds like something that ought to be backed up by statistics... say, a rise in otherwise-unexplained cardiovascular events that coincides with microplastic production.

Haven't seen any such studies, but I'm sure they're out there if you look hard enough.

> These effects consist of oxidative stress, DNA damage, organ dysfunction, metabolic disorder, immune response, neurotoxicity, as well as reproductive and developmental toxicity. In addition, the epidemiological evidence suggests that a variety of chronic diseases may be related to microplastics exposure.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/envhealth.3c00052

I can think of a few confounding factors for that...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/06/microsco...

this seems significantly better than past studies i’ve seen, thanks

Right, but that comment is not a study, it's just someone saying there's a study..... They might be wrong, mistaken, or whatever... Sorry if it seems churlish, but if you are after studies, that comment is not what you want.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/06/microsco...

Study was linked in article, but for those who don't want to go digging: https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2309822

i mean i looked up the study, it was very easy to find as it is covered in nature and recent

The comment that now has a link in it, did not have a link in it when I posted my comment!

Googling “microplastic cardiovascular” brought up both the study itself and a dozen news articles about it. In general, if you think a comment is low-quality because readers can’t easily find the source, you can help by posting that link yourself.

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