Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microplastics in the human brain

smithsonianmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 219 posts

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#21

Post by ericd »

russdill wrote: post #16
adriand wrote: post #14

The only good news here is that it's possible that the body can clear the plastics. This is from the linked study: > While we suspected that MNPs might accumulate in the body over a lifespan, the lack of correlation between total plastics and decedent age (P = 0.87 for brain data) does not support this (Supplementary Fig. 1). However, total mass concentration of plastics in the brains analyzed in this study increased…

My understanding is the best thing you can be doing along with reducing exposure is regular blood donation

So what you’re saying is that leeches as medicine are coming back.

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#22

Post by tcfhgj »

shironandonon_ wrote: post #10

I like the analogy where other articles have said we have microplastics in our brain about the size of a credit card (which generally weigh between 4g and 10g) better. Saying a “spoon’s worth” seems to be downplaying the unmitigated potential risk. We have no idea what will happen as we (and all the other creatures on earth) keep storing more and more microplastics in our organs. Nobody is going to stop driving. Car…

> Nobody is going to stop driving. Car tires are the largest source of microplastics.

many already have, bicycles and public transport ftw

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#23

Post by mythrwy »

Kapura wrote: post #20

Remember that car tire degredation is a significant portion of microplastics in the environment. Investing in mass transit is as imperative as it was to move away from leaded gasoline.

Move away from big cities and high traffic areas in the meantime is my solution.

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#24

Post by hammock »

Kapura wrote: post #20

Remember that car tire degredation is a significant portion of microplastics in the environment. Investing in mass transit is as imperative as it was to move away from leaded gasoline.

And we need more lightweight cars , not heavier, since tire wear is proportional to vehicle weight to the fourth power. Ironically, CAFE regulations and EV incentives both did the opposite

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#25

Post by mythrwy »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #7

As I understand it, they took a small sample of brain tissue, extracted the plastic, and then extrapolated that (based on the tissue sample size) over the whole of the brain. This assumes the presence of plastic is evenly distributed throughout the brain, which isn't necessarily the case.

This is one of those headlines that smells like nonsense before even reading the article (doesn't mean it is nonsense, but the quantity advertised seems implausible).

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#26

Post by timr »

This paper came up as a pre-print. You can't make the extrapolation that the headline is making - they're using gas chromatography to estimate quantities from 1-2mg samples, and then extrapolating to get to these scary sounding whole-organ estimates. If you look at the paper [1], you'll see that the microplastics in in situ samples are not discernible by light microscopy, and that there was a ~25% variation in within sample measurement of the GC [2], indicating a great deal of uncertainty in the precision of the fundamental measurement (the authors brush this off; see quote below).

Basically, you've got an extremely sensitive measurement system being used to make tiny measurements, and then they extrapolate these measurements by a huge factor to get to ug/g estimates. Further extrapolating (to the weight of an organ, say) when you know that there's 25% inter-sample variation, is just guaranteed to be nonsense.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03453-1

[2] "Both analytical laboratories (UNM and OSU) observed a ~25% within-sample coefficient of variation, which does not alter the conclusions regarding temporal trends or accumulation in brains relative to other tissues, given the magnitude of those effects."

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#27

Post by jondwillis »

robocat wrote: post #11
chiefalchemist wrote: post #7

As I understand it, they took a small sample of brain tissue, extracted the plastic, and then extrapolated that (based on the tissue sample size) over the whole of the brain. This assumes the presence of plastic is evenly distributed throughout the brain, which isn't necessarily the case.

I am hoping that they discover that polyethylene is a natural component of brain chemistry.

What about polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride, et. al?

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#28

Post by ryandrake »

silisili wrote: post #6
bhaney wrote: post #3

> not a spoonful, but the same weight as a plastic spoon oh

That's both a misleading headline and a really odd unit of measurement. So odd that I wouldn't be surprised if the US adopted it as the official unit of measurement of microplastics (I kid, as an American).

How many Bald Eagle Per Football Fields would that amount to?

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#30

Post by card_zero »

shironandonon_ wrote: post #10

I like the analogy where other articles have said we have microplastics in our brain about the size of a credit card (which generally weigh between 4g and 10g) better. Saying a “spoon’s worth” seems to be downplaying the unmitigated potential risk. We have no idea what will happen as we (and all the other creatures on earth) keep storing more and more microplastics in our organs. Nobody is going to stop driving. Car…

To me, the spoon sounds scarier. But I don't think there's a right answer to how scary a new phenomenon should be made to sound. You want it to sound scarier, this thing we don't know much about? Won't that happen naturally since everybody's ready to be scared of news anyway? Is it being downplayed? Relative to what, hunches? The information should be presented dispassionately, but engagingly, and that is an impossible combination, so it what we'll actually get is always something with the wrong overtones.
Post reply on HN