A Sense of Doubt blog post #3656 - Plasticified Brains - Microplastics in Our Brains
This news broke a couple of weeks ago, and it caused a substantial panic online.
So, here's one of the best articles and a good infographic.
SIGH.
Thanks for tuning in.
The Human Brain May Contain as Much as a Spoon’s Worth of Microplastics, New Research Suggests
The amount of microplastics in the human brain appears to be increasing over time: Concentrations rose by roughly 50 percent between 2016 and 2024, according to a new study
The human brain may contain up to a spoon’s worth of tiny plastic shards—not a spoonful, but the same weight (about seven grams) as a plastic spoon, according to new findings published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine.
Researchers detected these “almost unbelievable” levels of microplastics and nanoplastics in the brains of human cadavers, says study co-author Andrew West, a neuroscientist at Duke University, to Science News’ Laura Sanders. “In fact, I didn’t believe it until I saw all the data.”
Based on their analysis, the amount of microplastics in the human brain appears to be increasing over time: Concentrations rose by roughly 50 percent between 2016 and 2024.
The researchers also found much higher levels of microplastics in brain tissue than in liver and kidney tissue. And microplastic concentrations were also higher in the brains of deceased patients who had been diagnosed with dementia compared to the brains of deceased individuals without dementia.
Importantly, the study finds only a correlation between high levels of microplastics in the brain and dementia—it does not establish a causal relationship. It could be, for instance, that changes resulting from dementia make it easier for microplastics to accumulate in the brain. However, the researchers say their findings are troubling nonetheless.
“I have yet to encounter a single human being who says, ‘There’s a bunch of plastic in my brain and I’m totally cool with that,’” says study co-author Matthew Campen, a toxicologist at the University of New Mexico, in a statement
Microplastics and nanoplastics are miniscule plastic fragments that result from the breakdown of everyday objects like packaging, containers, clothing, tires and more. These small particles have spread all over the planet, from Mount Everest to deep in the Mariana Trench. They’ve also made their way into the human body, showing up in blood, baby poop, lungs and placentas.
In September 2024, these miniature pollutants were also discovered in the human olfactory bulb, a type of brain tissue that sits above the nose in the forebrain. At the time, researchers weren’t completely sure whether microplastics could migrate deeper into the brain.
The new paper suggests they can. First, researchers analyzed brain, kidney and liver tissue from patients who had died in 2016 and 2024. For broader context, they also studied brain tissue from patients who had died between 1997 and 2013. Some of the brains came from patients who had been diagnosed with dementia.
They found much higher levels of microplastics in the 2024 brain tissue, on average, than in the 2016 brain tissue, regardless of the patient’s age, sex, race, ethnicity or cause of death. Their findings suggest microplastic levels in the brain have grown by roughly 50 percent over the last eight years. This increase makes sense in the context of plastic production, which doubles every 10 to 15 years, reports the Washington Post’s Shannon Osaka.
“We think [the increase] is simply mirroring the environmental buildup and exposure,” Campen tells National Geographic’s Olivia Ferrari. “People are being exposed to ever-increasing levels of micro and nanoplastics.”
Microplastic levels were 7 to 30 times higher in the examined brain tissue than in the liver and kidney tissue.
Microplastic concentrations were also three to five times higher in the brains of patients with dementia, compared to cognitively normal brains. It’s not clear whether microplastics may cause or contribute to dementia, nor whether dementia-induced changes to the brain might allow more microplastics to enter.
More broadly, the potential health consequences of microplastics remain largely unknown. Some recent research, however, suggests they are likely harmful to the human body. A study published in March 2024, for example, found that patients with higher concentrations of microplastics in their arteries were at a higher risk of heart attacks, stroke and death.
Now that microplastics have been found deep in the human brain, the next steps will be to explore what effects, if any, they are having on human health
Future studies might also investigate how microplastics and nanoplastics are making their way into the brain in the first place, a feat that remains a mystery. Researchers are also curious about the unusual shapes of the plastic particles they found in the brain: thin, sharp shards, rather than the smooth, bead-like shapes they had expected.
“Somehow, these nanoplastics hijack their way through the body and get to the brain, crossing the blood-brain barrier,” Campen tells CNN’s Sandee LaMotte. “Plastics love fats, or lipids, so one theory is that plastics are hijacking their way with the fats we eat, which are then delivered to the organs that really like lipids—the brain is top among those.”
In the meantime, the world might want to consider “mitigation measures” to help minimize microplastic exposure, says Emma Kasteel, a neurotoxicologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands who was not involved with the paper, to National Geographic.
“We don’t know that much about the health effects, but the fact is that [microplastics] are [in the brain] and they shouldn’t be there, and maybe that’s worrying enough,” she says.
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- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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