What Do We Know About the Microplastics Inside Us?
e360.yale.edu
e360.yale.edu
A friend of mine worked on her bachelor’s thesis about the effects of microplastics on the immune system, specifically T cells. Her result was that the microplastic particles she studied were too large to interact with T cells.
She probably will not publish this result because she thinks it is not interesting enough. Classic file-drawer problem in academic science.
While I encourage her to do it anyways as a negative results is also interesting but she wanted results that are worthing of headlines in magazines.
Learned a lot about making microfludic flow cells at least
Those molecules may be toxic but the interactions are distinct from microplastics or nano plastics.
As far as I am aware, we have yet to have effective, replicable research on what if any biointeractions exist with nanoplastic particles, including single polymer chains.
TIL thermoplastic pellets are “microplastics” :)
The reason this is problem is because cells can never destroy nano-plastic so they keep self destroying forever (chronic inflammation).
I still have my doubts about actual scale of this, especially how we still haven't solved pm2.5 pollution or even asbestos and heavy metals. And then there's PFAS, VOCs, Phthalates and Bisphenols. There's insane amounts of benzene in gas stations and traffic jam, yet no one really gives a fuck (until there's like a ppm in a sunscreen lol).
You are most likely to inhale it due to plastic abundance in environment, just like thousands of other things. It doesn't even have ICD yet. Ingested microplastic unlikely to breakdown while it travels thru your body.
p.s. my partner de-plastified a lot of my life (thru a lot of opposition of me) to the point where a lot of plastic objects feel gross now.
Right, and when it comes to "what happens when the macrophage can't destroy what it engulfed", we can probably learn a lot from parallel work studying tattoos, where the ink-particles are similarly "attacked".
Plus it's a lot easier to create studies or even just observe the cells in question.
(/s)
Too bad common discourse is too distracted to consider nanoplastics…
By the time the public tires of microplastics debates, they’ll be in no mood to relitigate nanoplastics
Also, unfortunately, a result that industry and the anti-regulation crowd will use to say microplastics are harmless.
The mechanism of harm for asbestos is known to be that the fibers enter the lungs and can't be expelled, eventually leading to cancer. Its interaction with T-cells is quite irrelevant there.
>>> Also, unfortunately, a result that industry and the anti-regulation crowd will use to say microplastics are harmless.
>> also, asbestos is too small to interact with T-cells, so it must be safe.
> It's not really analogous.
Ironically, this is missing the point. They were commenting on flawed reasoning. This shouldn't need to be spelled out, as it's part of the conversation context.
Sometimes "dunking" comments are a variation on https://www.instagram.com/p/DY2DRKDhqaa - where everyone is arguing about who is wrong, because they aren't treating it like a conversation.
It's truly insane that everyone in the academic class understands the fundamental problems of herding and sampling bias and yet every incentive is in place to do this.
Careful, you're starting to sound dangerously close to an Austrian economist!
[ ;) ]
China seems to make some strides for their own academics, thinking loudly about moving away from glam publications as career incentives: https://www.ft.com/content/64a811f1-b132-4211-8a8c-2252cf964...
It's supposedly about the worry of leaking state secrets, but it will have positive outcomes apart from that.
Anyway, the people setting the incentives are the ones handing out the grants.
It wouldn't take much time for her to publish it then move on to something that looks good on a resumé, but it could actively work against her if she published something that doesn't substantiate the status quo. If you get labeled a science denier, because you published a negative result for a politically-charged subject, even when you agree with the overall cause, it'll be nearly impossible to get a job in the field, even with a flawless resumé.
>https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/923529
But your linked study only talks about biofilms and E.coli?
Her "result" of what? Was there an actual experiment and what was its scope or was this by surveying literature?
Microplastics are of a pretty large range of size, and then there are nanoplastics below that.
I'm also not an expert, but a quick search shows a number of results of microplastics affecting T cells, some directly and some in terms of immune signaling, so this negative result doesn't seem that definitive.
(as usual, the difficulty is in teasing out in vivo effects)
Very informative, thank you for your comment. You have truly contributed to the conversation. Good job.
I mean it's a detail free second hand anecdote about someone's informal discussion of their bachelor's thesis. Which part of that is the basis of a good scientific conversation?
Yeah, but we shouldn't take absence of evidence as evidence of absence. The fact is that it's just really really hard to establish a causal relationship, even if it's there, because of all the cofounders. Heck even if you constructed a study with a known poison, like lead, and you might not see the results in a single study. You could give 50 participants water with flint levels of lead in it for a month, and you might not get scientifically significant result just due to the wide variance in a population.
Or another example is just thinking how hard it would be construct a study with a control, when every single construction material has plastics in it and they are floating in the air around us all the time (as mentioned in the article). Could it affect mental or reproductive wellbeing? Certainly. Can we construct a study to establish either way? Not easily.
And one of the plasticizers they talk about, pthalates, are known to be endocrine disruptors (i.e. mess with hormones).
That's wrong. Yes, we should.
Each and every study that doesn't find evidence for what they are looking for is evidence for its absence.
If the studies are powerful enough then that absolutely isn’t evidence of absence at all.
Then again, perhaps we are simply two different types of people. I don’t believe that a complex system can be expected to stay the same when you introduce a new factor into it, while you prefer to adjust much later when effects appear or when evidence achieves total infallibility up to the academic level. I am risk-averse, you like taking it; I’d rather prevent, you’d rather cure. Stating that the former is “far, far more dangerous” is just begging the question though.
Take things like even certain physics propositions (e.g. discovering new particles) -- can take billions of dollars building a new reactor and years of experiments to find a result.
Anything medical or psychological also can take this result. If a chemical reduces your iq by 5 points over 10 years, it might not be able to do a study that finds that result on an academic budget.
Of course it's still possible for the theory to be wrong and the so-called junk DNA being actually important. It's only junk according to our classical, non-quantum and non-relativistic theory of junkiness.
Thanks for noting that, you totally caught me since I actually don't even really remember the stuff I read about that, which was probably false to begin with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_DNA#Junk_DNA_and_non-codi...
So upon further consideration, since I don't really know anything about the research of the impact of microplastics, I'll apologize for speaking of scientific hybris so flimsily, that was really the hybris of the layman (me).
I'm still skeptical, not of science but of the harmlessness of microplastics. Not because of any evidence I have, but because it's just so us... this cycle of putting something everywhere before we even know it exists, finding out it exists, going "nahhh it's probably fine" for years, decades or centuries, and then "oh shit". Which I'll admit is not scientific and not really a useful contribution to this conversation, either :P
> We assessed how reliable current measures are for trying to find microplastics in blood. And what we found is that lipids and fats will give you a false positive for polyethylene.
> We worked with an architect, and we built the lab pretty much from scratch. [...] So we ended up going with stainless steel. It was the only way to not have any plastics.
> I don’t think we’ve got really good evidence at all for what effects [microplastics particles on their own] might be having on human bodies. If we’re eating plastics, what size and what type of plastic can actually get into the bloodstream?
What exactly are they studying in the lab? The biggest takeaway from all this is that "we [still] don’t have enough information yet".
Getting to the point where we're actually able to measure something real is good progress.
and >...we found is that lipids and fats will give you a false positive for polyethylene. Lipids are made up of the same building blocks as polyethylene, so when we analyze them, they look identical in our analysis instrument. >I know it is easy to say we don’t have enough information yet, but we do know about [the health risks from] these chemicals that are in all the plastics that your food is wrapped in.
> And while we know a lot about the impact of chemicals added to plastic — such as phthalates, which have been shown to impact fertility, or bisphenols, which have been linked to Type 2 diabetes — we know very little about what effect the plastic particles themselves might be having.
Silicone holds the glass panel. Silicon is the glass itself. Yale editors, do your job. She worked "a crazy amount of details", and so can you!
Upwardly mobile middle/upper class people who've sort of "maxed out" the amount of personal identity they can buy with regular plastic things can unlock a new level of identity by deciding that plastics are bad for them and eliminating plastics from their life, a process which conveniently requires buying a whole new set of things that distinguish them from their peers.
This is the only way I can explain how irrational and inconsistent plastic-haters behavior is. There is so much invisible plastic in their life that they don't seem to care about.
Anything that shows evidence of omnipresence, endocrine disruption, bioaccumulation, and inter-generational transmission should be extremely, extremely closely scrutinized.
To think otherwise is absolute braindead contrarianism, full-stop.
There is practically nothing that ordinary people can do for prevention, mitigation, diagnosis or treatment of microplastics in our bodies, so I therefore conclude that it is futile and wasteful to worry or argue about it, unless you have abundant free time and resources to get paranoid strangers all in a frenzy, for no good reason.
What about those advocating for smoking bans in shared spaces?
Cholera outbreaks near the city water wells?
Or are microplastics special in some way?
Discover what plastic is harmful and we can't start to talk.
If microplastics are a case of FUD, then there's nothing to look into. How and why would anyone discover anything surrounding a case of moral panic/FUD? By definition, there's nothing to discover.
Like I'm pretty sure the bigger health risk with a plastic soda straw is the soda, not the straw, you know?
No, it requires buying a whole new set of things to fit in with and be accepted by their peers, to distinguish themselves from the outgroup, the plastic users.
I don’t necessarily believe this is some emergent elitism; I see it more as a modern religion with many many rules about eating and consumption (using plastic is now a sin).
Like any religion, sinners (for example plastic users) are mostly pitied because they are ignorant, but those who know and choose to use plastic anyway, well, it’s OK to hate them.
1. Is it based on inherently irrational, unfactual beliefs, e.g. anti-vaccination or anti-5G myths?
2. If we consider religion as a way to explain complex phenomena using just-so stories (the pop anthropology / layman idea of primitive man inventing Zeus to explain lightning), then what intellectual or emotional need does anti-microplastics belief validate?
You're right that the debate about plastics is mostly meaningless noise by people who don't really care. Taking advantage of uncertainty while it still exists is a lucrative game.
None of this is comparable to software. Writing software is a choice and the users don't have to care beyond the UI. It's apathy, not ignorance, that holds software back. Text editors and programming languages are not usually the highest priority choice to make. The majority of software tends to be specialized one-off solutions. We don't exactly have chemists cooking up their own kitchenware materials on the weekend.
I brought them up to illustrate that any endeavor will end up pockets of irrationality as part of the general culture. Doubtless in academia, scientific research, other forms of engineering, etc. there are little superstitions as part of the subculture.
That said, sure; the movement against microplastics is a pop health fad, which is different because it's a consumer-oriented activity whose actual effects are probably impossible to quantify. (As pointed out in a different comment in this discussion thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48836691) Building software produces tangible, measurable outcomes. Though likely far less measurable compared to other forms of engineering!
> It's apathy, not ignorance, that holds software back.
That's somewhat debatable, in that compared to the physical sciences, it sure seems like software engineering involves a fair amount of following traditions of preexisting practices and there's a lot of cargo culting that ends up happening. More of a craft than a science. But that's tangential to this discussion.
Your perspective on software is that of a consumer, so you're not necessarily wrong. You're in the majority of people using software along with all those people having their "holy wars".
I'm just saying it's not intrinsic to software. The majority of people who write software for a living are silent about this because it's completely irrelevant to their lives.
It's like this with all other creative work too. As they say "a poor craftsman blames his tools", but more generally improvisation is expected when you're supposed to know what you're doing. Professionals can't afford to be helpless. In fact, that's why we have so many competing standards in technology to begin with. Constant reinvention is the most boneheaded way to progress, but my point is that this is in direct opposition to everything you're saying.
You seem to be insisting that there's ignorance where there is just apathy. For every one person whining, the internet has a chorus of hundreds. On the other side of the fence, there are dozens of people who could fix it in their sleep just ignoring it because it doesn't bother them that bad. That's what makes software so different from manufacturing plastic doodads at scale. You at least don't need a factory, but there are probably countless other reasons.
Quoting the entirety of your comment verbatim in case you edit it. It's poor form to overplay your hand and troll instead of discuss.
I flagged your reply, and I suggest anyone reading these should do the same. HN is really going off the rails allowing this, but I know it's hard to rein it all in. At the risk of becoming even more of a hive mind, I think we need users to pitch in some more.
What do either of those statements mean? You neither say what I am not necessarily wrong about, and the second sentence means that - everyone is using software? The majority and the minority are both doing something?
> The majority of people who write software for a living are silent about this because it's completely irrelevant to their lives.
I’m not sure if this is accurate. Programmers have opinion, taste-based arguments all the time, sometimes based on dubious assertions. People pay attention to the proclamations of Linus Torvalds or John Carmack even when sometimes they’re not necessarily based on evidence, and parrot it as prophecy. Though sure, they are also not the norm, and becoming a public figure changes one’s behavior. (Uncle Bob Martin appears to have turned into a Twitter crank in recent years, for example.)
> It's like this with all other creative work too. As they say "a poor craftsman blames his tools", but more generally improvisation is expected when you're supposed to know what you're doing.
Like what? What are you referring to? What does improvisation have to do with what you were just writing about?
> Professionals can't afford to be helpless.
What is making them helpless? What are they doing or not doing?
> In fact, that's why we have so many competing standards in technology to begin with.
Okay this might be relevant. So you’re saying what I was talking about- tech holy wars based on opinions and superstition- causes competing standards?
> Constant reinvention is the most boneheaded way to progress, but my point is that this is in direct opposition to everything you're saying.
What does constant reinvention have to do with anything? What is an example of reinvention?
> You seem to be insisting that there's ignorance where there is just apathy.
I am not saying that all of engineering is ignorant, I am simply making the banal and obvious observation that any field of human activity will contain pockets of emotion-based conclusions that might not reflect reality.
The original point is that even the most seemingly empirical, scientific, whatever, domain might still involve facets that aren’t so scientific.
What does apathy have to do with it? If you were to rebut my point, you can simply say, “no there is no ignorance.” Why are you contrasting it with apathy?
> For every one person whining, the internet has a chorus of hundreds.
What does this sentence mean? A chorus of hundreds not what, not whining? The internet is full of whining choruses.
> On the other side of the fence, there are dozens of people who could fix it in their sleep just ignoring it because it doesn't bother them that bad.
Fix what? Ignoring what? What are you referring to?
> That's what makes software so different from manufacturing plastic doodads at scale. You at least don't need a factory, but there are probably countless other reasons.
??? Countless other reasons for what? Why are you contrasting software with physical engineering in a way completely irrelevant to my prior comparison?
Finally, I haven’t even touched upon your original response, which starts with “All culture is shared ignorance.” Which, while sounding both profound and impressive at first, is meaningless. All culture is shared knowledge as well. All culture is share norms, mores, values. What does it all mean?
> HN is really going off the rails allowing this, but I know it's hard to rein it all in.
Allowing what? Allowing people to write things? Last I checked people flag plenty of posts, including trolling. Rein what all in? Trolling?
Agreed, and I think we satisfy your two conditions and many more.
If I read you right, question 1 pertains to irrationality, and question 2 pertains to powerful storytelling.
OK here’s one example that shows you are on the right track, but there is still more.
My ex-wife is gluten free. This single choice never comes alone. in my ex-wife’s case, she also believes in the healing power of crystals and essential oils. (Irrationality checkbox); I cannot describe her vision of cosmic creation but I guarantee it involves witchcraft/folk magic and differs from traditional dogma (Storytelling checkbox).
BUT THERE IS AT LEAST ONE MORE VERY IMPORTANT CHECKBOX! A good religion also prescribes a proper way to behave and act in the world for maximum benefit in the afterlife. In these newer religions, the afterlife is “the health of the planet”, so one must do everything in this life to ensure you do not hurt that future.
The second is more prescriptive-suggesting than descriptive. What motivates the desire to create single scapegoats for all of modern ills? Maybe a breakdown in public trust in science, lack of comprehensive medical education, spread of misinformation, political polarization (lots of these health fads end up embroiled in culture wars), etc. So that's a host of issues to work on. And at the same time, the anxieties they are preoccupied with- widespread changes to people's bodies, for one - do need explanations for, otherwise people will flock to just-so stories.
Your introduction of a third point about how a modern pseudo-religion provides a call to action to achieve a desirable afterlife that actually exists in this life (e.g. some unspecified healthy future) is rather inspired. Reminds me of the phenomenon of how secular cults of political personality now appear to be moving in on traditional spirituality. Superstition, it would seem, can exist even without belief in the overtly supernatural.
I think the fact that I volunteer to clean up trash on public lands and know that weathered plastic is the period worst period to remove makes me move away from plastic in general.
Plus, a solid $3 wooden spoon is just a joy to cook with. They outlast the plastic ones, too.
Microplastic ingestion? Well, I'm not sure the effects or the relative quantity compared to tire shed and other industrial factors. But if I were forced by some diety to bet my life on if plastics in the kitchen or on clothing had a negative health effect, I'd make that bet.
But the main thing I don't get about the attitude stems from the fact that I don't really care what other people use in their kitchens. I recommend it.
Just please don't litter. :)
And on the topic of cost, I'm certain my kids have broken between 50 and 100 glass and ceramic drinking cups, storage containers, plates, and bowls in a little over a decade. They destroy plastic items at a way, way lower rate. Consider the use case of packing a kid's lunchbox. Plastic is... very tempting, for practical reasons. And cheaper.
Last I checked, plastic vs. wood on an otherwise identical stamped metal Victoronix knife costs you an extra $15-$20, which is a notable percentage of the total cost of the item. I sprung for the wood on my latest replacement just for the aesthetics, but it cost enough more that I did give it a good think first.
> Even bamboo scrubbers don't cost more than plastic (maybe even a little less) and I can't see any particular longevity difference.
Are those actually just bamboo? Maybe they are, I dunno, I can't recall seeing one. Lots of the "bamboo" materials I've encountered have turned out to contain (at least some) plastic.
> Plus, a solid $3 wooden spoon is just a joy to cook with. They outlast the plastic ones, too.
That's just true. Plastic spoons for cooking suck, wood and (where it makes sense and won't damage other things) metal are way better. Wooden ones aren't even expensive. The popularity of plastic ones is baffling.
One thing that's surprised me is the cost and/or total lack of availability of glass blender jars, even on fairly high-end brands (both the fake-high-end ones that are just expensive, and the actually-good ones). I remember my parents' assuredly cheapest-thing-in-the-store blender that they probably bought in the 70s or 80s had a glass jar, because that was just... standard. Meanwhile my as-awesome-as-I'd-hoped-thank-god expensive-ass Vitamix came with a plastic jar, and they do not make glass replacements. (I'm just checking and it looks like they might finally make one in stainless, though? Still, I'd prefer glass because being able to see what's going on in there is very nice, but I'm gonna have to look into that...)
> That's just true. Plastic spoons for cooking suck, wood and (where it makes sense and won't damage other things) metal are way better.
If you have ever used nice commercial high-temp silicone spatula, it's an incredibly versatile and easy to clean spoon for cooking. A bit expensive at like $20 though. Pair with nice nonstick pan and polycarbonate cutting board (dishwashable) for the easiest and most out of fashion cooking and cleaning experience.
> One thing that's surprised me is the cost and/or total lack of availability of glass blender jars
My cheapest in the store oyster blender is glass, I think they mostly still are.
Those, I do use! My wife insists on keeping one non-stick pan, mostly for eggs (I just cook them in stainless, whatever) so we've got a couple around for that specific use case, but I grab them sometimes for other things, too. They're great for scraping little bits of sauce out of the edge of a pan, things like that.
> My cheapest in the store oyster blender is glass, I think they mostly still are.
Ha! Really? I killed one blender before upgrading (the old "buy a cheap one, and if you wear out out, buy the expensive one" approach) and that was also plastic, but it probably wasn't Oyster. Hm.
All of those were glass when I was a kid, it seems really weird to me that the pricey ones are usually plastic now. I'm not even (that) worried about the health effects of it, I mostly just like the way the contents move & pour in glass better, the plastic's too "sticky" (though I do cringe a little when we blend a near-boiling sauce in the plastic jar)
And I do wonder what glues are used in the bamboo scrubbers, but I have no way of finding out. The scrapers are at least a solid single piece. They're either definitely bamboo or some very skillfully-engineered plastic to look exactly like it. ;)
There are a lot of cheap glass blenders on [ONLINE STORE]. But yeah, the high end ones--maybe they're trying to avoid that 50s look.
We just run with the plastic lids with glass tupperware. The only other sensible replacement we've found is reused jars and Ball jars, but all those lids have plastic liners, too. We don't cook the lids and food contact is limited. Would be nice to have something else. Silicone lids? We have some of those we picked up for Ball jars at some point. But this seems like a lower potential issue than cooking with plastic materials.
For really inexpensive stuff like blenders and glass containers is the second-hand store.
somehow this thread reminds me of that conversation.
Sorry if I offended you; fwiw I was describing a phenomenon that I observe. My own attitude about this whole situation was left unspecified, so I’ll add a few notes here: I do actively pick up litter (sometimes bigtime: I cleared a derelict boat from a lake today!) and I try to not litter. I try to respect the planet. I do use a lot of plastic.
First of all, yes, performatively following health fads has always been a thing for people with money.
But do you honestly believe this is what's going on at a large scale? What an absurd reaction to other people doing something that you don't like or don't understand. Nobody who isn't a paid influencer is sneering at you for using the wrong materials in your kitchen.
If you feel sneered that, that's your problem and not anyone else's. Are you going to start plasticmaxing, like rolling coal but for food containers?
I think you're doing the thing that you are accusing other people of doing. Creating an artificial distinction between "us" and "them", so that you can feel like you are part of the "us". It's just that in this case you want to feel like some kind of rational rebel, one of the final chosen few with common sense, in an increasingly irrational world.
Huh? You think it's hypocritical for people not to "seem to care about" things that, by your own definition, they are ignorant of?
Most of human behavior is irrational. If we were all perfectly rational, we would have healthy diet and exercise habits from the get go, and we'd have plenty of time to prepare food and exercise, because we wouldn't waste any time on entertainment.
Isn't this almost true by definition? If it actually works, it's not a "fad", just "science" or whatever. Advice like "eat more vegetables" and "don't drink alcohol" probably do work, but they're ingrained enough that nobody thinks they're "fads".
Besides, the breakfast cereal movement it created quickly devolved from the Kellogg's and Post's original healthy cereals, Corn Flakes and Grape Nuts respectively, into the sugar-laden craze of 1950's cereals. Even Graham crackers were healthy and bland at the time, but we now associate them with cinnamon and sugar.
Until then, I'll keep eating foods consisting of proven healthy ingredients, even if they are classified as Nova 4 ultra-processed, such as lasagna made using my great grandmother's recipe or ancient Mayan dishes like pavo con achiote and also cochinita pibil, while avoiding foods that are proven unhealthy despite the not-ultra-processed Nova 3 and lower status, like Cronuts, potato chips, and bacon cheeseburgers.
Achiote seeds add a bright red to yellow color, depending on the concentration, and add a mild earthy flavor. This puts it in the Nova 4 ultra-processed foods category, ostensibly because the color can make food more attractive. This is as opposed saffron stigmas, used in some traditional European dishes, which add a bright red to yellow color, depending on the concentration, and add a mild earthy flavor. Why adding achiote makes something ultraprocessed and adding saffron doesn't isn't explained, but I wonder if there's a predilection toward traditional European foods.
The Nova classification only counts fresh fruits and vegetables as unprocessed, which is Nova 1, so almost all foods are processed foods, Nova 3, or processed ingredients, Nova 2.
I eat healthy food and avoid unhealthy food, but the Nova classification system is so poorly done that it is meaningless. Even going off of actual levels of processing, instead of the ingredients, doesn't help much. One of the earliest processed foods, hominy, is much healthier than the unprocessed counterpart, and when Italians relied on polenta made from unprocessed corn, they became malnourished and suffered from pellagra, while those in America relying on the otherwise identical grits, made from hominy, weren't malnourished.
That's why I go off of actual research proving which ingredients are healthy based on the effects of adding them to or removing them from a diet that otherwise stays consistent in volume and calories, instead of the vibes-based categories the Nova classifications use, and the vague research showing that rich healthy people who exercise eat some things and poor unhealthy people who don't exercise eat other things, but never showing that eating some things actually makes you more healthy and eating other things actually makes you less healthy.
If similar levels of research into ultra-processed foods were applied to other statistics, they'd find that ice cream sales lead to drowning and owning a Ferrari makes you rich.