Human brain samples contain an entire spoon's worth of nanoplastics, study says

Dementia or no - that is actually a truly astounding amount of plastic build-up.<p>Like I almost don&#x27;t believe there&#x27;s a spoon&#x27;s worth of plastic in any semi-functioning human brain, that&#x27;d be like a pretty big cancer tumor right? Even if completely inert?

It would be interesting to see chemical analysis of those particles. Most common in the environment seem to be tyre particles (by a large margin), polyesters (textiles), polystyrene and polyethylene (both from packaging and single use utensils&#x2F;plates&#x2F;cups). Wonder if it is a different distribution in human body.

I wish there were better more accessible tests available, that you could take as a consumer to show how much plastic you have accumalated in different parts of your body.<p>I saw bryan johnson take a test like that recently but couldn&#x27;t find a vendor close to me that I could use. Gathering more data would be a great step in understanding the problem better

Caveat that this is yet to be peer reviewed, but I wonder if this is the leaded gasoline of our times<p>&gt; Editor’s Note: This story was originally written in August 2024 based on a preprint, which is an early copy of a paper that had not yet been peer-reviewed. It has been updated to reflect the final peer-reviewed and published paper in Nature.

Do we know the effects of these microplastics accumulated in our bodies?

Is that the plastic to make the spoon, or a spoonful of plastic?

Forgive my ignorance, but how the hell does a compound like plastic get biologically absorbed by the body without being broken down to a point where it is actually no longer a plastic compound?<p>I mean, we can eat triglycerides, but the process of digestion breaks them down in order for them to be absorbed, they are then reconstituted as needed on the other side.<p>What am I missing with regards &quot;plastic&quot; in the context of the article?

&gt;devastating environmental news posted<p>&gt;&quot;but where&#x27;s the peer-reviewed proof this is bad?&quot;<p>&gt;[+247]<p>&gt;&quot;classic HN contrarianism&quot;<p>&gt;[-89] [flagged] [dead]<p>&gt;rinse and repeat