What is microplastics?
These tiny plastic particles, which are smaller than 5 millimeters, are found in our food, drinking water and even blood.
Scientists from Brazil found new evidence that microplastics are contaminating the human body.
This study found that microplastics are present in brain tissue.
Microplastics in clothing and packaging
Researchers said that eight of the 15 human cadavers studied in this study had microplastics found in their brain tissues.
Most of the microplastics found in clothing and packaging material are common.
The nose is an entrance
Researchers said that this new evidence confirms that the nose is “an important entry site for air pollutants” and researchers.
What is the difference between microplastics and Nanoplastics?
Nanoplastics is plastic smaller than 1 micrometer and microplastics less than 5 millimeters. They are small plastic pieces that are difficult to detect with the naked eye.
There are microplastics everywhere
In the past year, several studies have examined how common microplastics were in drinking water, and in human tissue such as hearts and brains, and sperm. However, doctors and scientists are still unsure what this means for the health of humans.
Costas Velis is a professor of environmental engineering at Leeds University. He told The Associated Press that microplastics released primarily in the Global South are the “big time bomb” for microplastics. “We have a big dispersal issue. “We already have a huge dispersal problem.”
What does it mean for our health and wellbeing?
Plastics are known to cause inflammation and other problems in the body, which can increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
In the New England Journal of Medicine, a small study published earlier this year, it was suggested but not proven that patients who had plastics in their arteries faced a greater risk of dying from strokes and heart attacks. An expert who was not involved with the research said that the study could have exaggerated the effects.
“Even if there is a lot that we don’t yet know about microplastics and the harms they cause humans, I find the information available today to be very worrying,” said Dr. Philip Landrigan of Boston College.