Studies claiming to have revealed micro and nanoplastics in the brain, testes, placentas, arteries and elsewhere were reported by media across the world, including the Guardian. There is no doubt that plastic pollution of the natural world is ubiquitous, and present in the food and drink we consume and the air we breathe. But the health damage potentially caused by microplastics and the chemicals they contain is unclear, and an explosion of research has taken off in this area in recent years.
However, micro- and nanoplastic particles are tiny and at the limit of today’s analytical techniques, especially in human tissue. There is no suggestion of malpractice, but researchers told the Guardian of their concern that the race to publish results, in some cases by groups with limited analytical expertise, has led to rushed results and routine scientific checks sometimes being overlooked.
Gosh, now isn’t that a surprise?
One of the team behind the letter was blunt. “The brain microplastic paper is a joke,” said Dr Dušan Materić, at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany. “Fat is known to make false-positives for polyethylene. The brain has [approximately] 60% fat.” Materić and his colleagues suggested rising obesity levels could be an alternative explanation for the trend reported in the study.
Materić said: “That paper is really bad, and it is very explainable why it is wrong.” He thinks there are serious doubts over “more than half of the very high impact papers” reporting microplastics in biological tissue.
Oh, my.
Tim, remember never to accept any invitatations to anywhere near a Black Broadcasting Corp site. Given your penchant for constantly taking the piss out of the Graun by publishing appalling things like facts you would surely receive a poisonous blow dart in the back of the neck from one of their willing natives.
Mind you, the BBC inviting you is pretty much inconceivable…
ISTR Tim appearing on R4…
“There is no suggestion of malpractice”
Well there is now. Crooks and liars!
But on what scale? Public Health advice? Global Boiling?
It’s not exactly a shock to hear that there are ‘doubts’ over scientific papers in the medical field. ISTR a retired editor of ‘The Lancet’ stating that something like 90% of their published peer-reviewed papers subsequently turned-out to be wrong/unable to be replicated/bilge.
Here you are.
Richard Horton, editor in chief of The Lancet said this in 2015
Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of NEJM wrote in 2009 that,
My old Alma Mater issued a paper, where the students had been sent to test fish for micro plastics.
Where did they go ?
Tesco’s
It was at that point that I stopped listening about such things.
Good for you. Appalling! It’s Tesco not Tesco’s.
I’m surprised the Graun’s editors even allowed this to be published… Seems they *really* have no other avenue of escape….
I do like the “water pollution” bruhaha mentioned further on in the article…
10.000 particles per liter… *rofl* … Quick back-of-envelope that for PET ( the usual plastic bottle for beverages ) that’d amount to *roughly* a 1^10-15 to 1^10-18 molar solution.
For peeps who don’t “get” those numbers: that’s easily a 10.000 times lower concentration than that notoriously (not) found in homeopathic “medicine”..
Most amusingly, in the rebuttal mentioned in the article it was shown that detected “contamination” in their MilliQ blank was in the same ballpark….
(For the non-labrats…milliQ is the standard “pure” water used if you don’t want any contaminants. It’s so hypotonic that it’s actually dangerous to ingest… Distilled water can already cause problems, milliQ is far, *far* worse than that… )
You have to laugh….
Good points. And plastic residues or nano-residues are inert, anyway. I am reminded of the anti-vaxxers who think vaccine trials should use only saline rather than proven immunologically inert substances…
I think the brouhaha is over the assumption that plastics are inert. AIUI there are now assertions that they’re not, can behave like hormones, be poisonous, “forever chemicals”, etc. etc.
I’m not in a position to know, but think it’s reasonable to assume that of the huge array of plastics we now use, not all will be entirely inert. Question is, what is the level of risk compared with other pollutants, how is that risk distributed, and is the tradeoff with the undoubted benefits plastics bring to society positive or turning negative?
There are micro- and nano-plastics, and then there’s the extensive ground cover of discarded plastic the locals have created, and occasionally burn, in Zimbabwe. Which is the more pressing problem?
Funny… you type a longish technical response, and *that* gets shunted to a moderation queue?
Damn well hope it isn’t Lost.. I’d hate to type all that again….
CODEMONKEY!!!!!!
Dunno why, it wasn’t even in spam but straight to trash…..
Bugg’r it… short form….
At micro/nano levels plastics, and even silicates are *NOT* “inert”.
Then again… the actual load on your “system” at the reported levels, for the same type of molecules and derivatives is less than a portion of Brussels Sprouts, Spinach, Sauerkraut, or worse…Kimchi…
Paracelsus, not even close, etc….
Let me amend that…
Silica is *worse* ….. after all… the thing you read this on is based on the fact that on nano-scale silica *does* react.
We call this “digital technology”….
And yes… on a molecular level, Biology is all about “making electrons appear at the right place and the right time” , just as in modern microelectronics…
Water is a forever chemical. It exists forever unless an outside process breaks it down.
Note that water is *never* entirely pure, except in textbooks….
Also note that the Hydronium and Hydroxide ions are the most corrosive singular substances known to man at room temperature…
And we actually run on the stuff… Paracelsus, y’see…. 😉
So no… water is *very much* not a “forever chemical”…
( in relation to the whole units/l bruhaha, this means that a liter of water will contain a *minimum* of 60-ish *trillion* of those agressive molecule “pairs” per liter of water.
10.000 units of putative “inert” blobbies of plastic per liter suddenly sounds ….insignificant…. innit? )
But vaccine trials typically don’t use “proven immunologically inert substances…” as placebos. That’s the whole burden of the complaint.
Most vaccine trials use immunologically inert substances (including saline) as the control, and inert placebos are very common for the initial testing of a completely new vaccine. However, ethical guidelines often require the use of an active comparator vaccine – if one is already available for the disease in question. Which is hardly unreasonable, No?
There is also widespread use of what the paper authors insist on calling a placebo but which turns out to contain an adjuvant.
And, no, comparing with another vaccine makes no sense when the safety and efficacy of that vaccine was never properly established either.
If the adjuvant always accompanies the vaccine, what’s the problem? The vaccine works better with the adjuvant than without it. *shrug*
Comparing with another vaccine that has proved largely safe and largely effective is both rational and ethical. Are you seriously suggesting that a control group should have no protection at all against pathogen x, even given that infection with x can have serious health consequences?
“And plastic residues or nano-residues are inert, anyway.”
Ummmm…. Nooooo?
At that scale they are chemically and biologically active. So is Silicate.. That’s the whole *point* of the difference between clay and mere sand…
Thing is… Since *almost* all plastics deemed safe for use as food containers are esters, they’re “vulnerable” to our digestive system, or the rather impressive array of No-You-Don’t’s in our lungs.
And the whole set of “aborted reaction chains” within our cells. Which produce some *really agressive* doozies…
It’s a bit like the infamous “Cannabis Kills” research on rats.
And ye gods…. I used to be a pothead in my Student Days, but even then I could not imagine the sheer amount of THC I’d need to pump into my system to get *that* Stoned…
Nor did I have the money… That’s half a modern setup’s harvest *in a day* … For several days….
I don’t think you could even do that consciously.. You’d be zonked out so hard after the first hour all the other hours would somehow have to be forced on you…
At the concentrations/incidence people are waffling about, the actual biological extra load is… negligable…
And negligable is negligable…..
You’re talking formaldehyde loads that are a factor 1000 lower than a decent hangover…
Terpene ( and other aromatic mutagenic Nasties) loads that are *far* less than eating a portion of Sauerkraut or ( ironically…) Kimchi. ( that trendy Fav of the beau-pensants…)
Paracelsus all over… Yes… it sheds Stuff… but… it’s nowhere near in concentrations that our body ordinarily can’t cope with.
Because other sources of the same types of Bad Stuff are Wholly Artisanal and Natural.
In much higher concentrations if you refuse the Meat Option…
So …ummm…yeah…. Cabbage, especially fermented, is more dangerous than micro/nanoplastics deemed “safe for food storage”… Any form of mustard is, actually…
Just goes to show what people actually *know* about Biology…
TL;DR
And your point is, Mr Potato?
Well that spoils the whole scare, Grik. How dare you!
We all have some silica in us, more if we eat supposedly healthy shit like leafy vegetables. Silica, like plastic, is inert. Unless a large grain of plastic lodges in an artery and causes a blockage, and then you have to wonder how in heaven’s name did the large grain get there in the first place?
BTW distilled water is not good to drink? All my training as a Boy Sprout in how to make a solar still was wasted then.
Distilled water as-is? yes, that’s dangerous in large amounts…
Din’t the Boy Sprouts teach you that such a still is meant to get “potable” water, but that you then have to proceed to *do* something with it?
Cook, make tea, use it to work down a salt tablet or rations? Stuff?
Anything to get electrolytes in along with the water? Lest you get stuff like shock, cramps, up to heart attack?
Not that I have a high opinion of the Boy Sprouts, but….
The hotels on Madeira insist that short term visitors drink bottled water: the Madeira piped water supply is just too pure to be safe to drink.
I *think* there’s a different incentive at work there… 😉
In our experience they supplied bottled water to our room at no charge.
Wait…. A hotel that *doesn’t* try to fleece its guests through “amenities”?
What’s the name and address? If I ever go to Madeira….
Oh you must go. A week there in early January is a positive vaccination against the winter blues.
Hm: maybe I could have phrased that better.
Been. Reids, early 70s. Loved it. It’s probably changed a bit now.
I take it those three extra decimal places are for fun.
Mr G, being of a Continental persuasion, is presumably following the European habit of using a full stop instead of a comma in numbers. for the decimal point.
‘There is no suggestion of malpractice…’
Of course not *sniggers*
That’s standard Cover Your Ass boilerplate.
While there’s certainly malpractice in science, I suspect the replication crisis has more to do with funding imperatives (in part, unconsciously) biasing judgement, and also encouraging a rush-to-publication, alongside the all-too-human inclinations to confirmation bias, selection bias, etc.
So can we have non-fixed plastic bottle tops back again?
Multinationals find it convenient and cheaper to follow EU standards regionally. The UK could ban fixed bottle tops, but the consumer would face higher prices…. I can live with FBTs
They’re what a pair of snips are for. Easy.
That’s my technique on most. For some they have messed with the design to retain the cap so much there is almost no thread left holding it on when closed.
So when you shake it, say a carton of say orange juice, the top comes off and the contents fly out.
Even worse I found a pool of milk in the fridge because my wife had laid the milk bottle down on its side with the top screwed on as far as it would go.
That IS what I use my toenail clippers for.
I think those buggers are far worse for getting bits of plastic in your tea.
This is entertainment, not science.
Pol·lu·tion
/pəˈlo͞oSH(ə)n/
noun
1. the presence in or introduction into the environment of a substance or thing that has harmful or poisonous effects
Then why do you call it ‘pollution,’ asshats?
“There’s gold in them thar hills.” – Mark Twain
Plastic is inert. THAT’S WHY WE USE IT!
There is a solution to this non problem: incinerate our waste plastic. OH NOES CAN’T DO THAT!
That’s what the Japs do.
The EU prevents the use of landfill (or makes it very expensive) in order to ensure a ‘level playing field’ for the Cloggies, where if you try to use landfill, you just create a big puddle.
I thought half the polders were created by building some dykes, mulching up waste, running a heavy roller over it then spreading some top soil over that, hey presto wait 50 years and youve got nice flat Dutchland.
” You’re telling me these people were just making it up?”
the health damage potentially caused by microplastics and the chemicals they contain is unclear
I thought microplastics were the chemical unless I’m missing something. Tomorrow the Guardian will report on contamination of tomatoes by isomers of carotene and the chemicals it contains. Carotene IS the chemical you barnardos.
However, micro- and nanoplastic particles are tiny and at the limit of today’s analytical techniques,
We’ve worked really REALLY hard to perfect techniques for detecting smaller and SMALLER amounts of stuff, and bingo! we’ve been able to detect stuff in the human body!!!1111!!!! That PROVES that it’s evil, because we can now detect it!
Gamecock worked for the SC Pollution Control Authority in 1971. I had a DO meter that measured PPM. Which left me with the bias that concentrations under PPM really don’t matter. Announcements of PPB leave me nonplussed.