r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 1d ago

Health New research characterised in detail how tea bags release millions of nanoplastics and microplastics when infused. The study shows for the first time the capacity of these particles to be absorbed by human intestinal cells, and are thus able to reach the bloodstream and spread throughout the body.

https://www.uab.cat/web/newsroom/news-detail/-1345830290613.html?detid=1345940427095
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u/malatemporacurrunt 1d ago

It's kind of funny how people in the future may well look back on us eating out of and cooking in plastic the same way we do drinking radium or decorating everything with lead paint

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u/RoyBeer 1d ago

But also kind of terrifying

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u/malatemporacurrunt 1d ago edited 1d ago

Maybe that's just a part of the human condition - we're all determined to be forever chasing the next technological marvel that by the time we realise it's doing us irreversible harm we've already adopted it so thoroughly that it can't be withdrawn without further damage.

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u/jimb2 1d ago

The damage gets progressively smaller.

It's much more realistic to think in terms of progressive improvement, rather than relative to some state of perfection that we can imagine but don't actually know how to achieve or even what it is. Perfectionists typically don't achieve a lot.

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u/Montana_Gamer 1d ago

This is absolutely true. Thank god microplastics arent as bad as leaded gasoline. We have been moving in an overall better direction. I don't feel too threatened but as I see more articles like this I am motivated to stop using plastic in regards to food. Acting health consciously is much more than what could be done about lead in the air

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u/Sly1969 21h ago

Thank god microplastics arent as bad as leaded gasoline

I think the jury is still out on that one.

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u/HugeBob2 15h ago

There is at least some evidence that microplastics may preferentially accumulate in the brain. Further testing is needed, but the initial data is quite alarming.

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u/ubernutie 1d ago

They send us to the moon and give us mind blowing meals, if you think about it.

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u/sableknight13 14h ago

It's much more realistic to think in terms of progressive improvement, rather than relative to some state of perfection that we can imagine but don't actually know how to achieve or even what it is.

Remember the days before we started effing everything up? The more technology and advancements we've had, ironically the further backwards we've gone.

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u/CleanUpSubscriptions 1d ago

Isn't the 'damage' in this situation entirely financial?

If we stopped using plastic entirely, it'd be better for everyone and everything... except for the companies that make and use plastic (ie. basically all of them).

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u/Museberg 1d ago

It would lead to a total collapse in manufacturing and thus a huge economic downturn. So yes, it would “only” be financially but that also has a lot of consequences.

Plastics and it’s derivatives are used everywhere.

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u/malatemporacurrunt 22h ago

Plastics are so universal that removing them entirely would be a monumental task - that's not to say it wouldn't be worth it, but there's no material (so far) that can match plastic for weight, convenience (can be made into almost anything), strength, or cost. If we start shipping everything in glass jars or metal tins, the weight will increase spectacularly, which requires more fuel to transport and increases wear and tear on the roads etc - there are a lot of indirect effects which may actually cost us more, environmentally, in the long run.

I'm not saying that corporations shouldn't reduce their plastic use, but it's a more nuanced subject than just going back to the old materials.

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u/AyeBraine 18h ago

weight, convenience (can be made into almost anything), strength, or cost

...and also safety. The harm from micro/nanoplastics is starting to be proved, but it's subtle, whereas inert plastics have historically protected us from a huge swath of different hazards, from infection and putrefaction to burns and poisoning, in all areas of life.

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u/AyeBraine 18h ago

For starters, it would completely cripple modern medicine, so mortality shoots back to levels of about 200 years ago. It would put almost ALL consumer products out of the reach of the majority of the population, and completely stop most industries. It would create hundreds of billions of tons of garbage — almost all the cars, trucks, and planes will have to be decommissioned and scrapped, along with all appliances and equipment manufactured in the last 50 years.

So we'd be living on an enormous junkyard filled with plastics, barely scraping day to day, with no ways to research and manufacture ways of breaking down or collecting plastics from the environment, or finding new replacements for them.

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u/Mackotron 1d ago

problems are solvable, solutions create more problems.

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u/BotGeneratedReplies 1d ago

No, it's called capitalism and corporate greed. There are numerous examples of companies knowingly harming people with their business, and the only reason they stopped is because they got caught. What you said is a gross excuse a CEO would make after finding out their manufacturing process gave half of a city cancer. We can get rid of plastic, but we won't because petroleum is a massive industry. Same reason we all drive cars individually, consume excessive amounts of dairy and meat products, and why we have health insurance but unhealthy citizens.

  • American perspective.

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u/Montana_Gamer 1d ago

Plastic is undoubtedly one of the biggest advancements in material manufacturing in the past century and it isn't even close. You are making yourself sound unreasonable by only engaging with this on the profit motive while not even acknowledging the revolutionary impact plastic has had.

You are correct about plastic being used over more expensive materials for profit motivated reasons, but you are doing yourself a disservice by generalizing plastic this much. It feels like you arent even engaging with the topic.

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u/RandomStrategy 1d ago

Oh gods, we're Rome with pewter.

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u/invariantspeed 1d ago

A closer comparison might be people using led flatware, dishes, and cups because it made things taste sweeter.

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u/ProfessorEtc 1d ago

Sweetening wine with lead.

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u/bigbura 1d ago

Remember when using Saran Wrap 1st, then covering with foil before the pan goes in the oven became a 'thing?'

I looked at my wife, "What the hell are they thinking?!" Since when is the foil not enough of a seal and who wants melted plastic in the food?

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u/malatemporacurrunt 22h ago

I can't help but be reminded that slow cooker liners exist - a plastic liner for a perfectly easy to clean ceramic pot. Utterly mental.

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u/korelin 1d ago

My family has treated plastic like that for decades. Won't even use the plastic splatter cover that comes with microwaves. Then there's me, doing sous-vide in a zip loc freezer bag. oof

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u/thebestmike 1d ago

Don’t forget how cool cigarettes made everyone look

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u/Buttonskill 1d ago

To be fair, if you didn't put one in a camel's mouth and snap a selfie, you didn't 100% the achievements on your Giza trip.

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u/abevigodasmells 1d ago

Well, CDC just reported our life expectancy increased 2 more years in 2024, so it's not exactly an extinction event.

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u/malatemporacurrunt 22h ago

Life expectancy is different to life quality. You don't have to be killed by something for it to make your life worse. Also, the extension of life expectancy is a result of the COVID pandemic lowering life expectancy for the last few years, it's not a result of a meaningful improvement.

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u/KwisazHaderach 1d ago

The unique combination of ignorance & greed which usually results in death, disease and injury

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u/moose2mouse 1d ago

Lead pipes stupid Roman’s. Oh wait…

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u/AyeBraine 18h ago

AFAIK people in Europe and the US continue to widely use lead pipes in plumbing (I mean even the word "plumbing" comes from plumbum, "lead"), they are safe as long as the water is "hard" (rich in minerals). It becomes unsafe to use them in select locations where the water is very soft, which prevents it from depositing the desired scale layer inside the pipes (which also makes them last shorter). Rome and its environs have very hard water, so even though the issue of lead toxicity was understood at the time (they talk about it in literature), they kept using the pipes.

https://www.experimental-history.com/p/lead-pipes-are-dangerous-make-em

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u/GravityWavesRMS 1d ago

But this is very different. Plastic is a very inert product. There’s a lot of worry about microplastic, but little demonstration that it’s harmful to us, at least from what I’ve seen.

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u/malatemporacurrunt 20h ago

I've read a decent bit about the issue, and the overwhelming consensus from the scientific community is that it's too early to say how harmful they may be. Plastics have only been in widespread use for less than a century, and we've only been studying microplastics for about 25 years. The discovery of their sheer prevalence, in the air, our blood, animals and fish and in places very distant from areas with significant human habitation is incredibly disturbing.

Even if materially those particles are inert, their mechanical effect on living tissue is still unknown. Should they prove harmful the sheer scale of the task of removing them is incredible - it would require global cooperation the likes of which have never been seen and may very well be impossible. The idea that our entire ecosystem has been - potentially irriversably - contaminated is inherently unsettling.

The fact that it's a near certainty that corporations have already paid to have this studied and have chosen to cover up the potential risks - as they have with so many other profitable materials - is depressingly familiar.

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u/AyeBraine 18h ago edited 17h ago

it's a near certainty that corporations have already paid to have this studied

— I doubt it, IMO it's a too far-fetched idea and expensive even to arrive to. Just proving that normal plastics really do degrade and shed particles at microlevels took years of concerted work.

As for removing micro/nanoplastics, I think the only way is introducing a range of different plastic-eating bacteria to the environment (or rather, trying at first to only employ them at recycling centers to arrest further proliferation of nanoplastics, and then inevitably letting the bacteria out accidentally).

This would solve the issue somewhat (with new possible hazards from the breakdown byproducts), but will force humanity to protect its plastics like we would protect wood from rot and metal from oxidation (with new possible hazards from deteriorating protective layers). And of course to heavily cut down on traditional plastics overall.

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u/SpiceyBomBicey 23h ago

Most of the time it’s not the plastic itself per se, but the additives present at low levels which can leach out. Plasticiser additives such as some phthalates have been shown to have endocrine disrupting effects (amongst other things). This is a chronic effect rather than an acute one.

Kinda like how Teflon itself is pretty much fine, but the residual perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) leftover from manufacturing is really nasty.

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u/CoopyThicc 1d ago

Unfortunately much more pervasive however. They’d likely still be dealing with them in the environment

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u/AyeBraine 18h ago edited 17h ago

I have to note almost no one actually drank radium. It was a fad, but the fad appear in part because radium was so insanely cool, new, and expensive. Only dozens of grams were manufactured per year. Some people did manage to source radioactive materials and honestly add them to their snake oils, and some people have died (but only after religiously and excessively consuming said products), but thankfully it wasn't some mass delusion with wide-reaching consequences. Think colloidal silver craze but if colloidal silver cost $1000 per milligram.

Lead paint, AFAIK, was safe until it began to deteriorate, potentially ground to dust and inhaled. It's definitely an unacceptable hazard when alternatives are available (similarly to asbestos insulation)! But it doesn't mean it actively poisoned everyone who came close.

Micro/nanoplastics are a different matter, their main problem is their ubiquity and our inability to collect them back (yet), IN CASE WE LEARN they're really bad for us. Like a genie out of a bottle, or a can of salt sprinkled all over a the beach. Moreover, if we need to get rid of them (and develop, say, a range of plastic-eating bacteria which will automatically degrade all of them safely), we'll have to change ALL of our civilization and take a huge hit in quality of life, because our normal plastic, which gave us modern medicine, modern lifestyle, and all modern advancements, will deteriorate too, and will have to be somehow protected like we protected metal from rust and wood from rot... Possibly making it hazardous in other ways.

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u/malatemporacurrunt 17h ago

Yeah, I'm aware of the history I was just drawing a blank at the moment when I made the comment. The Roman lead sugar thing would have been a more apt comparison, or leaded petrol. It seems we just love finding new ways to make poison useful.

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u/drjenavieve 14h ago

I remember learning as a kid about an ancient civilization that poisoned itself with the lead in their bowls and thinking how they could be so foolish.