Microplastics
Globally, humans eat an average of five grams of plastic every week, according to data from The World Wild Fund (WWF). How can a gram of plastic appear? It resembles a credit card in size. Spend a moment picturing that... You can be consuming the same amount of plastic each week as a credit card.
Since the 1950s, plastic manufacturing has multiplied 200-fold, and since 2000, it has grown by 4% annually. Remember that these figures refer to virgin plastic rather than recycled plastic.
What Exactly Are Microplastics?
Five millimeter-sized or smaller plastic particles are known as microplastics, they have the potential to contaminate our food, water, and even the air we breathe.
Our environment contains primary and secondary microplastics. Primary microplastics are small particles that are discharged from commonplace products like tire abrasion, clothes and textile fibers, shower gel microbeads, and tire microbeads. Larger plastics like plastic bottles and bags degrade over time, producing secondary microplastics as a byproduct.
How Do Microplastics Enter Your Body?
Our water supply, food supply, and even the air we breathe include microplastics. According to research, soil conditions are altered by microplastic contamination, which may have an effect on the area's animals and plant life.
Having said that, researchers claim that drinking water is by far the most common source of microplastics, with plastic particles contaminating groundwater, surface water, tap water, and bottled water. According to current estimates, just drinking water exposes an individual to 1,769 pieces of plastic every week!
Due to the fact that mussels are consumed entire, including their digestive system, after living in plastic-polluted oceans, shellfish come in second with 182 particles per week (or 0.5 grams). The study from WWF notes that indoor air tends to be much higher in microplastics than outside air due to limited air circulation and the fact that many synthetic home textiles contain microplastics, even though inhalation seems to represent very minute levels of microplastic ingestion.
Where is all the plastic going? is a question that naturally arises in light of plastic production's exponential growth. What percentage of this plastic makes it into our ecosystem, in other words?
A third of all plastic manufactured, according to research, leaks into the environment. 100 million metric tons of plastic garbage were generated in this way in 2016.
As previously indicated, the output of virgin plastic has surged 200 times since 1950 and by 4% annually since 2000. Plastic production could rise by 40% by 2030 if this rate persists and the total amount forecast is produced.
Microplastics and Human Health
The environment and marine life have both been shown to contain large amounts of microplastics. The existence of microplastics in people has only been the subject of a little research. This exploratory study located and measured the amount of microplastic in human feces.
Methods:
From Beijing, China, a total of 26 young male students between the ages of 18 and 25 were enlisted. We used a self-administered 7-day 24-hour fluid intake diary to track fluid consumption, and we kept track of our meals for three days. Participants used a sterilized fecal collector to collect feces. Microplastics in the leftover fecal remnants were measured and identified using Fourier transform infrared micro-spectroscopy.
23 (95.7%) of the subjects had microplastics detected in their feces. Microplastics in these 23 samples ranged in abundance from 1 particle per g to 36 particles per g (size 20 to 800 m) in these 23 samples. Per participant, the total mass of microplastic particles ranged from 0.01 to 14.6 mg. Each sample contained one to eight different forms of microplastics, according to qualitative analysis of the microplastics; polypropylene (PP), which was discovered in 95.8% of the fecal samples, was the most prevalent type. We looked at links between individuals' water consumption patterns and the number of microplastics found in their feces. Microplastic content in feces and use of bottled water and beverages were shown to be moderately correlated (r = 0.445, P = 0.029).
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33434834/
Microplastics can enter living things, including mammals, via the environment. In this work, the presence of microplastics was assessed using Raman Micro spectroscopy on six human placentas that had been donated by willing mothers who had healthy pregnancies. Four placentas included a total of 12 microplastic pieces with irregular or spherical forms and sizes ranging from 5 to 10 m. The morphology and chemical makeup of each microplastic particle were determined.
And if we don't start making some significant adjustments, by the year 2025, the ocean is expected to have three tons of fish for every one ton of plastic.
RESOURCES:
https://www.nature.com/nrneurol/
2022. NP. Malika Katrouche. All Rights Reserved.
