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There’s a Sandwich Bag of Plastic In Your Brain
A new study shows how microplastics accumulate in the frontal cortex
We are what we eat. And we are what we drink. And, increasingly, we are eating and drinking plastic.
Plastic is all around us. It’s in our water bottles and shopping bags, our tubes of toothpaste and shampoo, the containers that hold our food, our cups and plates and knives and forks. I sometimes think of how we look back on Roman elites with their penchant for lead cutlery with a certain superiority — little did they know their very forks and spoons were killing them. And then I wonder if people in the future will look back at us with a similar feeling. “Our poor ancestors. How did they not realize that eating things that don’t biodegrade was bad for them?”
Microplastics and nanoplastics — tiny bits of plastic as small as 1 nanometer across — have been found in a variety of human tissues: lungs, placenta, and lipid-rich plaques in the carotid arteries. I think we all feel a sense of unease when we hear that — these things are clearly not supposed to be there — but to be fair we don’t yet have clear evidence that they are directly harmful, though there is some suggestive data coming out of animal studies.
But the unease I have knowing that my lungs or liver or kidneys might have microplastics lodged in them is nothing compared to the unease I felt reading a study which measured nano- and microplastics in the brain — and found more there than anywhere else. A lot more.
It’s always good practice to make a hypothesis before you read actual study data so you can ground yourself in your own expectations and biases. So when I saw this study, appearing in Nature Medicine from Matthew Campen at the University of New Mexico and colleagues examining tissue concentrations of nano and microplastics in the liver, kidney, and brain, I made my predictions.
Maybe this is the nephrologist in me talking, but I assumed we would see the highest levels of these things in the liver and kidneys — the organs that are supposed to filter stuff out of our blood…
