Stroke Patients Have High Levels of Microplastics Clogging Their Arteries, Researchers Find 67
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: There is some microplastics in normal, healthy arteries," Dr. Ross Clark, a University of New Mexico medical researcher who led the study, told Business Insider before he presented his findings at the meeting of the American Heart Association in Baltimore on Tuesday. "But the amount that's there when they become diseased -- and become diseased with symptoms -- is really, really different," Clark said. Clark and his team measured microplastics and nanoplastics in the dangerous, fatty plaque that can build up in arteries, block blood flow, and cause strokes or heart attacks. Compared to the walls of healthy plaque-free arteries, plaque buildup had 16 times more plastic -- just in the people who didn't have symptoms. In people who had experienced stroke, mini-stroke, or vision loss, the plaque had 51 times more plastic. [...]
To investigate why, Clark studied samples from 48 people's carotid arteries -- the pair of superhighways in your neck that channel blood to your brain. The difference in plastic quantities surprised him, but his team found another concerning trend, too. Cells in the plaque with lots of plastic showed different gene activity than those with low plastic. In the high-plastic environment, one group of immune cells had switched off a gene that's associated with turning off inflammation. Clark's team also found genetic differences in a group of stem cells thought to help prevent heart attacks and strokes by reducing inflammation and stabilizing plaque. "Could it be that microplastics are somehow altering their gene expression?" Clark said. He added that there's "lots more research needed to fully establish that, but at least it gives us a hint as to where to look."
Ross, who specializes in the genetic mechanisms behind disease, agreed that more research is needed, but added that she thinks "these plastics are doing something with these plaques." Tracking microplastics in the human body is a new scientific endeavor as of the last couple years. It's not perfect. Clark's team heated the plaque samples to more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit to vaporize plastic polymers and break them down into smaller organic molecules, which can be identified and measured by their mass and other properties. Unfortunately, the lipids in plaque can break down into chemicals that look very similar to polyethylene, the most common plastic found in everything from plastic bags to car parts. "Because we know about this problem, we've taken a lot of steps to remove those lipids and confirm their removal, so that we're sure we're measuring polyethylene," Clark said. Still, he added, "it's a big limitation, and it should be acknowledged that these types of methodologies are continuously improving." "Almost all of what we know about microplastics in the human body, no matter where you look, can be summed up as: It's there, and we need to study further as to what it's doing, if anything," Clark said.
To investigate why, Clark studied samples from 48 people's carotid arteries -- the pair of superhighways in your neck that channel blood to your brain. The difference in plastic quantities surprised him, but his team found another concerning trend, too. Cells in the plaque with lots of plastic showed different gene activity than those with low plastic. In the high-plastic environment, one group of immune cells had switched off a gene that's associated with turning off inflammation. Clark's team also found genetic differences in a group of stem cells thought to help prevent heart attacks and strokes by reducing inflammation and stabilizing plaque. "Could it be that microplastics are somehow altering their gene expression?" Clark said. He added that there's "lots more research needed to fully establish that, but at least it gives us a hint as to where to look."
Ross, who specializes in the genetic mechanisms behind disease, agreed that more research is needed, but added that she thinks "these plastics are doing something with these plaques." Tracking microplastics in the human body is a new scientific endeavor as of the last couple years. It's not perfect. Clark's team heated the plaque samples to more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit to vaporize plastic polymers and break them down into smaller organic molecules, which can be identified and measured by their mass and other properties. Unfortunately, the lipids in plaque can break down into chemicals that look very similar to polyethylene, the most common plastic found in everything from plastic bags to car parts. "Because we know about this problem, we've taken a lot of steps to remove those lipids and confirm their removal, so that we're sure we're measuring polyethylene," Clark said. Still, he added, "it's a big limitation, and it should be acknowledged that these types of methodologies are continuously improving." "Almost all of what we know about microplastics in the human body, no matter where you look, can be summed up as: It's there, and we need to study further as to what it's doing, if anything," Clark said.
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You've put quotation marks around the period at the end of your sentence. You've also inconsistently punctuated "M.D." and "MBA", and have chosen to spell out "O.K." in your post subject.
Introspection is difficult!
Re:Okay (Score:5, Informative)
You've put quotation marks around the period at the end of your sentence.
US = inside, UK = outside.
You've also inconsistently punctuated "M.D." and "MBA"
Some style guides say to include the periods on MD, or at least used to, based on what I can find. Most style guides say not to include them for MBA. Cannot say definitively here, but I would agree.
and have chosen to spell out "O.K." in your post subject.
They are considered interchangeable, but style guides will point to one or the other. The only hard rule would be to stay consistent.
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"is." is not a verb; "is" is a verb.
Re: Okay (Score:2)
Yes, it is.
Re: Okay (Score:2)
"be" is the verb. "is" is the simple present form of the "be" verb.
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Let's keep going! ;-)
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It's a little more complex in the UK, not least because there are different rules depending on which version of British English you use. I prefer Oxford, which is why I spell some words -ize.
However, the OD style guide recommends using single quotes instead of double, and that is standard practice in British newspapers, but not in novels.
To my mind the main thing is to put the comma or period inside the quotes if it is part of the quote, but outside if it is something you added to make your sentence. For ex
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You think so?
"There is some microplastics" looks strange but it's a reasonable statement based on how they're typically measured. "Microplastics" aren't counted but measured as a continuous quantity. Like "there is some milk in the jug."
THATS how they measure plastic levels? (Score:5, Interesting)
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"Because we know about this problem, we've taken a lot of steps to remove those lipids and confirm their removal, so that we're sure we're measuring polyethylene,"
It's almost like scientists are smart and recognize issues that might interfere with a measurement and take steps to mitigate them.
And it's definitely like you stopped reading part way through the summary and assumed you were smarter than the scientist doing the research.
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My gut can do it. You just need to try harder.
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You consume micro plastic particles every day. They get into your body by your mouth when you eat and drink. They migrate through the gut wall into the blood stream and are deposited all over your body.
One of the major sources of micro plastics is from drinking water from disposable plastic bottles. This constitutes about 90% of most people's micro plastic consumption.
Just use a refillable stainless water bottle with tap water (filtered through a charcoal filter if you doubt the purity of your tap water...
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Finally! Evidence of harm from microplastics! (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, wait, this isn't evidence of microplastics causing harm.
What exactly the plastics are doing in there, if anything, remains a mystery. The new study offers some possible clues, though.
They found microplastics in the material that clogged arteries, but then we find microplastics in a lot of tissues in the human body. They made a claim of something like many people having a "spoonful" of plastics in their brains, or something like that, don't sue me if I didn't get that quite right as it won't go far. If there was a spoonful of sand in people's brains then would we be able to notice any reduction in cognitive ability? Increased risk of strokes or other health problem? I can recall someone having so much fluid in their skull that it reduced the volume of their brain to something like 1/3rd the normal volume and nobody suspected much until the patient died and they did an autopsy. The human brain is quite resilient.
It would be helpful to know how much plastics are found in the human body compared to other foreign objects. Foreign objects like sand, pollen, insects and parts of dead insects, or whatever small little bits of stuff that end up in what we eat, drink, and breathe. Without that comparison it is difficult to gauge what it means to have a "spoonful" of plastics in my brain as I suspect it is possible that after growing up on a dairy farm I've breathed in a lot of dust and other crap that has accumulated in between my ears. All it might mean to find elevated levels of plastics in the those that had strokes is that such people lived lives with exposure to all kinds of chemicals and such that could impact health. Maybe they ate a lot of crap food that was packaged in plastics. Maybe the worked in some kind of factory where plastic dust would be kicked up by machines that also produced noise, EM fields, or other stressors on the body that could impact health long term.
I still don't know why microplastics should be a concern. Is this a field that we should study? I would guess so. That doesn't mean we need to induce fear of plastics on people with "news" like that being presented. This is click bait and fear mongering than any attempt to inform, and I'm growing tired of it.
Re:Finally! Evidence of harm from microplastics! (Score:4, Interesting)
There may very well be dangers due to microplastics, but most of these studies sound to me like loud warnings intended to get additional funding. All the results might be completely accurate, but the sensational warnings always are followed by "We just don't know,".
It also reminds me of wild claims about other studies, where you have to dig deep to find that the conclusions were only made "on mice."
Re:Finally! Evidence of harm from microplastics! (Score:4, Insightful)
Jesus,
They checked healthy arteries.
They checked diseased (clogged) arteries and found 16x the level of microplastics of the healthy arteries
They checked arteries of stroke victims and found 51x the level of the healthy arteries, 3x the level in the clogged arteries.
And this is homeopathy?
Microplastics aren't at all hard to detect with the right equipment, they're just hard to see without. It's like cholera in early Victorian times, we're at the level of knowing there's something but not understanding exactly how or why it a problem or why it impacts some people far worse than others.
You're the doctors saying "it's a miasma", these are the doctors saying "the miasma theory makes no sense, how come the nurses who care for cholera sufferers are less likely to catch it than people living at the other end of the street".
Nobody knows why plutonium is dangerous to ingest in "homeopathic doses" either. It's a heavy metal, it's radioactive, and it bioaccumulates - it's a really good idea to avoid even low levels of ingestion, and a really good idea to have international regulations controlling how plutonium is produced, stored, and disposed of (there are isotopes of plutonium that aren't useful for fission) even though we don't actually know how it will kill you - the primary theories are its heavy metal toxicity and the effects of its radiation on the bone marrow.
And the same with microplastics, they're not heavy metals, they're not radioactive, but they do cross the blood-brain barrier (I don't think plutonium does) and it appears they do bioaccumulate, possibly in the worst places in the body and they might have a genetic level impact on cells. AFAICT this study is looking for correlation rather than causation although they suggest a possible causative effect, I'm not sure if that's speculation or an informed guess - you would need to be an expert in the field to know and I'm not.
Re:Finally! Evidence of harm from microplastics! (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish the for public consumption level research would more clearly clearly state if the concern is micro-plastics or nano-plastics, which EPA and some other treat as a subset of micro-plastic.
A micro plastic can be as a big as 5mm; that certainly inst getting into an artery (though normal means anyway) let alone anyone's brain. Even down to fractions like 10ths of a millimeter I'd be surprised if bio-accumulation is really a problem. However there are a lot of materials like synthetic fabrics that readily produce plastic fragments quite a lot smaller than that.
Common sense tells us that plastic in the body (medical implants aside) probably isn't good for us, how harmful it is we don't know. The cautionary principle suggests we should try limit that.
To do that we need a better handle on:
1) Identifying how small is to small for safety, when do plastics start to accumulate vs being stopped by our various mechanisms for preventing the ingress and effecting expulsion foreign objects.
2) what types of plastics in what kinds of applications lead to dangerously small plastic bits. Can we avoid these, while still enjoying other applications
3) how do we make it easier for consumers to spot when plastic is deteriorating and might be producing dangerously small particles at a higher rate.
4) how do we manage and incentivize safe plastic disposal.
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For those who are interested in looking at the actual data, you can find that here,
https://atvb.apprisor.org/epsA... [apprisor.org]
(No thanks to Business Insider for not providing a link to even the conference proceedings.)
The finding is very interesting. I think it is clear, despite the small sample size, that there is a clear association between microplastic concentration in plaques and stroke symptoms. What is not known is whether the microplastics are somehow contributing to the disease or are just present in this sel
Re: Finally! Evidence of harm from microplastics! (Score:3)
Yes, and a lot of smokers live long, with their tarry lungs evident only at the autopsy. Yet, that smoking causes cancer was established by correlational studies, not double-blind medical trials.
The evidence these researchers have seems just as strong... the equivalent of a few smoking guns.
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It's true. To quote a famous example, there's also nothing to indicate that jumping out of a plane without a parachute is the cause of death.
The summary itself is quite clear that it's just an association. A concerning one.
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If you're reading this (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you still don't want government action on microplastics, well that's probably because you have a whole spoon's worth of plastic in your brain.
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I fully support the research into the issue. But I worry about the way that small amounts of affirmative data can be blown up into full blown panics. You can already see evidence of every ailment being attributed to microplastics.
Let me repeat myself (Score:2)
YOU HAVE A PLASTIC SPOON'S WORTH OF PLASTIC IN YOUR BRAIN.
There is no world where that doesn't cause a whole raft of medical issues. It's not that every ailment is being blamed on it it's that having that much plastic floating around your brain is going to cause a lot medical ailments so you're going to see a lot of discussion about all the medical ailments it's causing.
I swear to God I can get this country to freak out over 34 trans girls in spo
Re: Let me repeat myself (Score:1)
Well to be fair, people probably think trans girls in female sports make since because they have a whole spoon with of plastic in their brain.
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YOU HAVE A PLASTIC SPOON'S WORTH OF PLASTIC IN YOUR BRAIN.
The fact that you are passing this off as absolute fact just proves my point. This comes from 1 study that sampled 24 people then the media made the conclusion that this must mean everyone is the same as the average of these 24 participants. Adding to this is the fact that the methods for detecting microplastics are very limited and cannot but used as a definitive indicator of microplastic levels.
So again, yes we absolutely need to continue studies and improve detection methods. But this is NOT a proven
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Well the "increase in trans" people (which is a non-thing) could be correlated with the microplastics in our brains. Could also be not that.
Maybe the enstupification of the US is caused by microplastics too? Because I blame social media for that one mainly. And republican policies. And Russia, other state actors.
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There is no world where that doesn't cause a whole raft of medical issues.
Maybe, maybe not. This first -- pre-print -- study finds a link between strokes and plastic. Probably it's causal in the direction you're assuming, but we don't actually know that. We definitely don't know that it causes "a whole raft of medical issues". It seems plausible that it does, in spite of the fact that plastics are pretty inert chemically.
But we need a lot more research before we start doing anything drastic. Note that I'm not opposed to drastic action to combat serious issues, but we also
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Microplastics make children trans!
Seriously, you can't disprove that yet. Somebody needs to tell RFK.
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Why are some people so afraid of full-blown panics about things like the environment and health? Just don't panic. People aren't going out flipping over cars and setting businesses on fire due to some research pointing towards possible harm from microplastics.
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Raising alarms is fine and most of the time needed. But panics tend to spread misinformation and that's what I'm against.
Re: If you're reading this (Score:2, Funny)
I hate to say it but that was sorta brilliant. Whoever hijacked rsilvergun's account is slightly witty 'ish
It's still me (Score:2)
The weirdo who was posting with variations of my username is switched the posting as auto-generated random users and quoting old comments of mine though. So there is that.
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Slashdot should be paying you a salary.
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You have a whole spoon's worth of plastic in your brain. And if you still don't want government action on microplastics, well that's probably because you have a whole spoon's worth of plastic in your brain.
And if you still believe the government is here to help, you’re probably rolling joints made out of plastic.
(Might not want to wonder too hard as to how the plastic got there.)
Re: If you're reading this (Score:5, Insightful)
The government belongs to the people. That we neglected our democracy is no excuse to blame anyone but ourselves for the current state of affairs.
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The government belongs to the people. That we neglected our democracy is no excuse to blame anyone but ourselves for the current state of affairs.
Our government in the US belongs to money and greed. People haven't been involved since long before Citizens United, though that was definitely the death-knell of even putting up a pretense that our government belongs to us. We fuck around with a dog and pony show called "elections," but all the candidates are bought and paid for, or shortly will be if they climb to any position of actual power. There's a reason we're in this mess currently. And it's mostly because Greed is God, with fancy trappings that ma
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No, he's right. The government belongs to the people who can vote. The fact that you sell your vote to money and greed is the problem.
Government isn't here to help or hurt (Score:2)
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What size spoon would that be, exactly?
I actually have more than most, because many years ago, I had a brain bleed due to an AVM. Doctors used plastic (acrylic) to seal off the area. That plastic has been in my brain ever since. It literally saved my life. But yes, I probably do have a spoon's worth of plastic in my brain.
It's easy to *imagine* the plastic in the brain filling up a "spoon". But the truth is likely that, given the tiny size of these microplastics, the actual combined mass is more like a pinh
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You have a whole spoon's worth of plastic in your brain.
And if you still don't want government action on microplastics, well that's probably because you have a whole spoon's worth of plastic in your brain.
love it, but please dont forget personal action either:
hot foods + plastic = no
plastic + microwave = no
it's only a bit less convenient to play it safe.
But (Score:2)
Is it possible that this research got the causation backwards? Perhaps it's not excess microplastics that cause arterial plaques, but the exact opposite - the arterial plaques cause microplastics build up - because, you know, plaques slow the normal blood flow and promote micro particles' precipitation?
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Fair enough. But if we have to be totally fair, the message you replied to wasn't trying to suggest that microplastics pollution wasn't a problem.
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Also, I'm suspicious of people who run to the media before presenting their research t
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That's also bad news because the way plaques grow is by stuff sticking to them and building up. Plaques in general aren't terribly bad for you. Plaques that get big enough to block blood flow are.
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To be fair, if we started peeing visible chunks of plastic there would definitely be some action. Just as soon as the screaming stopped.
who will pay for this research? (Score:2)
What they proved was (Score:2)
Microplastics tend to collect in plaques.
How did they find people to study? (Score:2)