Human brain samples contain an entire spoon's worth of nanoplastics, study says (opens in new tab)

(cnn.com)

24 pointslucaslazarus1y ago14 comments

14 comments

13 comments · 8 top-level

dp-hackernews1y ago· 3 in thread

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?

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.

What am I missing with regards "plastic" in the context of the article?

sdwr1y ago

It enters the body physically, then spreads around the body physically, unaffected by chemical processes. The small pieces are small enough to enter the bloodstream, and from there the brain.

dp-hackernews1y ago

So does that include all particles of a similar size, like any sort of not digestible dust for example stone dust or sand dust etc?

If that's true, then I'm even more confused regarding how we assimilate and absorb nutrients into the body. I thought these broken down nutrients were microscopic and selectively absorbed, which suggests that our bodies naturally contain all sorts of potential contaminates that are not chemically broken down like nutrients are.

kbelder1y ago

Does it concentrate in the brain specifically, or is it distributed throughout our bodies? The brain is about 2% of the mass of our body. Is there 50 spoon's worth of plastic in our body?

I'm feeling a little skeptical.

1 more reply

oniony1y ago· 2 in thread

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

alasarmas1y ago

Paragraph 4:

    That’s the equivalent of an entire standard plastic spoon, Campen said.

oniony1y ago

Is there a standard for plastic spoons?

Ancalagon1y ago

Dementia or no - that is actually a truly astounding amount of plastic build-up.

Like I almost don't believe there's a spoon's worth of plastic in any semi-functioning human brain, that'd be like a pretty big cancer tumor right? Even if completely inert?

IndrekR1y ago

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/plates/cups). Wonder if it is a different distribution in human body.

abe941y ago

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.

I saw bryan johnson take a test like that recently but couldn't find a vendor close to me that I could use. Gathering more data would be a great step in understanding the problem better

lucaslazarusOP1y ago

Caveat that this is yet to be peer reviewed, but I wonder if this is the leaded gasoline of our times

> 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.

hassleblad231y ago

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

ppollaki1y ago

>devastating environmental news posted

>"but where's the peer-reviewed proof this is bad?"

>[+247]

>"classic HN contrarianism"

>[-89] [flagged] [dead]

>rinse and repeat

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