We’ve obviously seen a lot of studies about the proliferation of microplastics. They seem to be in practically everything and everyone to an almost cellular level. Are there any modern studies or even just hypotheses for what the actual effects are? Has it just not been long enough for us to gather data?
The problem might be that if they’re everywhere there’s no control group without them, so it’s hard to say if an effect is actually caused by microplastics or not.
In a laboratory setting, presumably you could makeq conditions clean enough to grow a cell culture that is free from micro plastics. But that isn’t going to tell you much about systemic effects like in an organ or body.
Maybe you could breed mice in a clean room. Not sure what the generational half life of microplastics is…
The alternative you could probably test is levels of Microplastics. Grow a number of colonies with varying levels of microplastics and compare between them.
Don’t forget the food… And the water, and the water used to grow the food, etc. Creating a clean generation of even mice would be pretty difficult, it’s just everywhere, including most of the tools we’d use to make a cleanroom
The problem is that plastics are not stable. They are constantly breaking down and releasing an array of chemicals in the process. Great, now they’re inside us too. Oh. They’re inside everything else too so yay?
There are a lot of gastro surgeons and specialists that are running long term studies on increased stomach and colon cancer rates in relation to microplastics. A few of them have come out and started recommending colonoscopies starting at 40 instead of 50.
We’ve obviously seen a lot of studies about the proliferation of microplastics. They seem to be in practically everything and everyone to an almost cellular level. Are there any modern studies or even just hypotheses for what the actual effects are? Has it just not been long enough for us to gather data?
The problem might be that if they’re everywhere there’s no control group without them, so it’s hard to say if an effect is actually caused by microplastics or not.
In a laboratory setting, presumably you could makeq conditions clean enough to grow a cell culture that is free from micro plastics. But that isn’t going to tell you much about systemic effects like in an organ or body.
Maybe you could breed mice in a clean room. Not sure what the generational half life of microplastics is…
The alternative you could probably test is levels of Microplastics. Grow a number of colonies with varying levels of microplastics and compare between them.
I have a hypothesis that the proliferation of microplastics could be related to the rising cancer rates in young people nobody can yet explain.
At very least, people should stop microwaving plastic containers.
Don’t forget the food… And the water, and the water used to grow the food, etc. Creating a clean generation of even mice would be pretty difficult, it’s just everywhere, including most of the tools we’d use to make a cleanroom
The problem is that plastics are not stable. They are constantly breaking down and releasing an array of chemicals in the process. Great, now they’re inside us too. Oh. They’re inside everything else too so yay?
So an issue of correlation and causality.
There are a lot of gastro surgeons and specialists that are running long term studies on increased stomach and colon cancer rates in relation to microplastics. A few of them have come out and started recommending colonoscopies starting at 40 instead of 50.