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View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Biology, Chemistry, Neuroscience, Medicine, Psychology
After hearing about microplastics being detected in our bloodstream, are there studies being conducted on the effects of microplastics on a cellular level? What do we know so far and how plastic might be affecting our health and any changes plastic might be making to us microscopically. Thanks!!!
Comment by Indemnity4 at 17/03/2023 at 03:29 UTC*
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
are there studies being conducted on the effects of microplastics on a cellular level?
Yes! Science[1] and Nature[2] (both paywall) discuss this a lot.
2: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01143-3
You ingest or inhale about 100,000 microplastic particles every day. One hundred thousand - that's a lot of particles!
However, that is under 4% of all the particles you consume every day. The whole world is made up of particles. Rocks, dirt, soil, bits of living tissue, lots of things.
However, at end-of-life autopopsies find only about 1000 microplastic particles in your entire body. Almost all of the microplastics don't interact with your body at all - they pass through your digestive track or out your lungs as easy as a ghost goes through a wall. So over 80 or so years, ingesting 100,000 a day, only a miniscule fraction carry across into your body.
That means we are looking for tiny effects. Maybe be signficiant later, but it's still very needle-in-a-haystack problem right now.
There are studies where animals are deliberately loaded up with microplastics[3] - and nothing happens.
We know the particles are there, what we don't know about is potential sources of exposure, length of exposure, concentration effects, it hasn't even been linked with any follow-on effects different from conventional material particulates.