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Microplastics in the human brain

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#51

Post by pulvinar »

kijin wrote: post #36
scotty79 wrote: post #19

Cool. Now how much sand is in your brain? Equivalent of two glass spoons? Sand dust is way more abundant than plastic and similarly inert.

Depends on where the sand is. I don't want that stuff in my lungs.

Lungs have been dealing with sand dust since there were lungs, have they not?

Honest science on a foreign material in the brain or body should be able to present a baseline amount of total foreign material for comparison.

If our environment is now 10% microplastics, then 10% of the foreign material found in the brain being microplastics would be normal.

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#53

Post by [deleted] »

kijin wrote: post #44
hammock wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> tire wear is proportional to vehicle weight to the fourth power. Does this mean that a bus that weighs 10 times as much as a small car will produce 10000 times as much tire dust? If it does, I'm not sure if investing in buses will reduce tire dust at all. A bus can replace a lot of cars, but 10000 is a stretch. We need more trains.

[deleted]

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#54

Post by penjelly »

kijin wrote: post #44
hammock wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> tire wear is proportional to vehicle weight to the fourth power. Does this mean that a bus that weighs 10 times as much as a small car will produce 10000 times as much tire dust? If it does, I'm not sure if investing in buses will reduce tire dust at all. A bus can replace a lot of cars, but 10000 is a stretch. We need more trains.

trams were popular in tons of places before, I understand they improved traffic significantly compared even to today, and they'd still have a positive effect now, I think. But most places shifted towards a car centric focus and we lost those.

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#55

Post by linotype »

ethagnawl wrote: post #45
hammock wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm not sure why you're being down voted for suggesting a practical and fact based solution. The USA is, regrettably, not making a pivot towards public transportation anytime in the near future. So, lighter cars are one way to address this issue. You didn't expound upon your point about the unintended consequences of CAFE standards but they're very real. Instead of making smaller and more efficient sedans per the gui…

Los Angeles would be very difficult to transition at this point, it’s just too low density. It was better 100 years ago than it is now.

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#56

Post by hatthew »

penjelly wrote: post #49
hammock wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

EV/hybrid only "zones" in Europe are crazy to me because the electric cars leech more tire carbon into the air anyway. Some regulation seems intelligent on the surface, but the devil is in the details.

Solid/particulate pollution from tires is definitely a problem, but in terms of carbon specifically isn't it many orders of magnitude less than the carbon from gas engines or electric power plants?

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#57

Post by joseangel_sc »

hammock wrote: post #24
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

I don't think this is entirely true but we need more research https://youtu.be/FcnuaM-xdHw?si=6bvFQdUjHi28CugV

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#59

Post by lemonberry »

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

Interesting. My father has received a ton of donor blood over the past few years. Once he's gone I'll be donating regularly. My father's alive because dozens of people donated.

To anyone here that has made a deposit to the blood bank: we thank you.

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#60

Post by itishappy »

roenxi wrote: post #17
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…

> unmitigated potential risk The risk does seem fairly mitigated, most of us will make it through today fine. The only part of my brain I can account for now is the 1x credit card worth of plastic, all the other bits are a mystery. Death was inevitable before the microplastics, remains inevitable after the microplastics and things seem fine so far. We don't know much about the risks of anything. People regularly dous…

> The risk does seem fairly mitigated, most of us will make it through today fine.

This is an incorrect usage of the word "mitigate." To mitigate means to lessen the risk. Mitigation requires action.

I suspect you mean that the risks are "overstated."

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