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Microplastics detected in human blood in new study
- elevaet 5y agoHypothesis: hormone-mimicking plastics in the human body are causing endocrine disruption and are part of the cause of obesity epidemic.
- IshKebab 5y agoDoubtful. There are much much more obvious causes of the obesity epidemic, and obesity isn't uniformly distributed like plastic is.
- helpfulmandrill 5y agoWouldn't surprise me. The problem is how would we ever establish this, given the difficulty now of finding people without microplastic contamination?
- DrBazza 5y agoObesity is due to the introduction of high fructose corn syrup and decades of the sugar industry making out that "low fat" foods in the shops are better for you, whilst lacing them with sugar to make them taste better.
- cameronh90 5y agoHFCS isn't used much in Europe, but obesity rates are still following the US curve here (albeit a decade or three behind, depending on country). Processed or sugar laden foods may be the culprit but the science isn't at all settled.
- skocznymroczny 5y ago> HFCS isn't used much in Europe, Maybe in the past, but these days when I do grocery shopping in Poland, most products have it
- cameronh90 5y agohttps://www.diabetes.org.uk/research/research-round-up/behind-the-headlines/high-fructose-corn-syrup-fuelling-diabetes https://www.diabetes.org.uk/research/research-round-up/behin... At least in the UK, we consume very little HFCS, but we are one of the European nations closest behind the US on the obesity scale. No idea how much HFCS you have in Poland, but you're relatively thin compared to us, so if you have more HFCS.. possibly points the finger at something other than HFCS content. Also it's interesting that pets, lab animals and city wildlife are getting fat globally too on a similar curve to humans.
- simonh 5y agoPoster said these days, so it may be HFCS just hasn't been common in Poland for long enough to have a demographic effect. Personally I think yes HFCS is a problem, but basically it's just massive consumption of surplus calories.
- amanaplanacanal 5y agoI still can’t see how that would affect lab animals on a tightly controlled diet.
- simonh 5y agoHow what would affect them, massive consumption of excess calories or consumption of HFCS? And affect them how? I'm guessing it makes them fat, but as I said I know it's a problem. I've no idea what point you're trying to make.
- amanaplanacanal 5y agoLab animals on a controlled diet are also gaining weight, without taking in excess calories. This would suggest that some environmental factor is causing the weight gain.
- AlexandrB 5y agoHFCS is "high" in fructose in relative terms but is actually quite similar to "normal" sugar (55% fructose vs 50% fructose). I think you're right that the real culprit is probably that sugar is being shoved into everything, including staples like bread.
- dagurp 5y agoObesity is a problem in lots of places where the use of HFCS is uncommon. I would say the main issue is sedentary lifestyles and the high availability of cheap and unhealthy fast foods (in crazy portions).
- scroot 5y agoI think it's not about HFCS specifically, but rather the norm that was established by the availability of cheap (via a subsidized corn industry in the US) sugars that could be placed in anything. As far as I understand, HFCS does not have any biochemical effects that are different from other added sugars. It's more the economics and culture it created for food production.
- graeme 5y agoMonocausal thinking doesn’t suit a complex system. HFCS increases obesity. But you have increasing obesity in regions without it, and have people who eat it who aren’t obese. It’s neither necessary nor sufficient and your comment contributes nothing to evaluating the role of microplastics.
- Retric 5y agoVast quantities of extra calories are needed for large segments of the population to be obese. That kind of surplus is very recent and absolutely required for an obesity epidemic. So we absolutely have the root cause, but not perhaps the only one.
- gizmo686 5y agoNot really. The difference between obese and healthy weight is about 40 pounds. At 3,500 calories per pound, that is only 140,000 surplus calories to become obese. Over a period of 5 years, that is about 77 calories a day, or roughly 1 egg. Obesity is not caused by a vast availability of calories. It is caused by a breakdown in the bodies ability to match caloric input with output. To be clear, vast amounts of added sugar seem to cause this system to breakdown, but the mechanism is more complicated than simple calories available in the environment.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago> It is caused by a breakdown in the bodies ability to match caloric input with output. Not a breakdown. The human body is just way too efficient. Absurdly so. Humans can exercise for hours and not burn 1000 kcal but it takes mere minutes to ingest that many calories.
- Retric 5y agoThat depends on the exercise and your body eight. A 200lb guy can burn over 1,000 calories an hour during a heavy workout. Though few can keep that up for a full hour. That’s how you end up with serious athletes on 8-10,000 calorie diets.
- frontman1988 5y agoPlastics definitely are lowering testosterone levels worldwide.
- elevaet 5y agoCan you cite any evidence of this?
- bbpost 5y agohttps://www.salon.com/2021/04/04/plastic-pollution-infertility-extinction/ https://www.salon.com/2021/04/04/plastic-pollution-infertili...
- pc86 5y agoHow about a source that isn't a magazine interview from someone trying to sell their book? There are sibling comments elsewhere in this thread that go into much greater detail than I can about how the link between plastic and fertility is tenuous at best. But the most significant piece of evidence against it IMO is that plastics are more or less evenly distributed. You don't have a lot more exposure at various socio-economic levels. But higher socio-economic class has a distinct negative correlation with obesity.
- adamredwoods 5y agoNot specifically testosterone or world-wide: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7967748/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7967748/ >> In a further study, following 28 days exposure by oral gavage (100 μL PS-MPs (10 mg/mL)) PS-MPs (0.5, 4, 10 μm) bioaccumulate in mice testis altering spermatogenesis progression, SPZ morphology, testosterone biosynthesis and body weights and inducing inflammatory response [73]; interestingly, in vitro MPs enter into germ cells, Sertoli and Leydig cells [73].
- sva_ 5y agoYes: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c06316 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c06316 Another hypothesis: Endocrine disruptors in pregnancy lead to damages in the endocrine system and development of children, and contribute to some of the issues many people are nowadays facing.
- 0des 5y agoI love how we will blame anything besides admitting we stuff our holes too often, know it, and still don't stop doing it. Excessive food, especially sugar, is the biggest undercurrent in harmful substances in our modern age and hardly anybody wants to do anything about it.
- shiftpgdn 5y agoBecause that’s a lazy idea. Do you really think everyone everywhere suddenly all at once decided to eat more and walk less?
- pizza234 5y agoThere's no mention of "sudden change" in parent's post. The reference is to "modern age", which is consistent: shift from manual to sedentary job, increase of processed foods, increase of food availability, increase of pressure from industry to eat more and more processed foods; it's a very linear phenomenon.
- bamboozled 5y agoProbably yes, you can click a button and have pretty much anything you need delivered the same day (in some places).
- nicoburns 5y agoNot everywhere, but it certainly seems like that's happened in the US. Most people I know (from here in the UK) who have been on trips to the US have come back shocked at both the portion sizes and the lack of opportunities for exercise in everyday activities (apparently this is a lot to do with a culture of driving everywhere). And if it was a longer trip (weeks/months), they've often also put on a noticeable amount of weight that they then quickly lose once they're back home.
- arethuza 5y agoThe very first thing I ate in the US (in 1995) was a club sandwich - it was huge and had been battered, deep fried and served sprinkled with icing sugar. Even by Scottish standards that seemed a bit much!
- lalalandland 5y agoI wonder about other hormonal stress caused by plastics. A lot of plastic softeners are estrogen like
- krageon 5y ago> [...] part of the cause of obesity epidemic. The (US) obesity epidemic comes from a food landscape obsessed with sugar. Most things you will find in supermarkets and restaurants are just significantly more calorically dense than it needs to be. That's your cause. The epidemic comes from eating too much. Pointing fingers at other things might be useful, after the biggest issue is tackled.
- hiccuphippo 5y agoExcept microplastics are found all over the world and obesity epidemics only on certain countries.
- SamBam 5y agoUnsure if we have evidence that microplastics build up in our food supplies and bodies at the same rate across the world, especially if this is the first study to even detect microplastics in the body.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoEveryone loves to flaunt this theory, as well as the sperm quality one. I think both are wrong, or at least, minor effect sizes relative to the bigger picture. The sperm quality drop is due to obesity plain and simple. It's a well studied, strong effect size. The rise of obesity itself has many obvious causes. Sedentary work, high calorie, high sugar/sweetener diets. If it were microplastics you would expect to see this as a universal effect, but it's really not. While obesity is rising on average, it's highly concentrated. Many communities, especially affluent ones, have very low obesity rates still. Very few people in my social / work circle are obese. And like, although I've cut out soda and most of the obvious bad things, its still apparent to me that my diet is likely overloaded with sugar and sweeteners much more than past generations. Poor people have high stress, insufficient money to buy quality food, and insufficient time / hardware to invest in food preparations on a regular basis. And we have case examples too. Remote Amazonian (brazil) populations get introduced to nestle food? Wait several years and bam, fat. Why are pets getting fatter? Because they're eating garbage too. Why are wild animals getting fatter? Because they're eating garbage too. You then see follow up questions like "Why are sperm quality readings dropping in dogs?" It's because they're fucking fatter. "Why are sperm quality readings dropping in people that aren't obese?" Because the whole population is shifting right and is fatter within their BMI bin. Antibiotics are a real studied cause as well of causing fattening. Frankly it would be extremely surprising to me if we didn't see the outcomes in obesity that we are seeing given the dietary crises the world is facing. Microplastics need not appear in this picture.
- titzer 5y ago> "Why are sperm quality readings dropping in people that aren't obese?" Because the whole population is shifting right and is fatter within their BMI bin. I can't make sense of this statistically. Bins are just arbitrary cutoffs on a distribution. It's not like people know where the lines of bins are and crowd up against the edge, throwing off the median inside. People shifting "within" a "bin" doesn't change much. Instead, people shift bins. Some bins have more people, some bins have fewer people. I think obesity is a huge factor, maybe 80%. But I don't know why you feel so strongly that every other explanation is completely false.
- hogrider 5y agoAnything except people overeating, sure.
- Semaphor 5y ago179 comments 4 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30810626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30810626 Here are the other articles, but only that one had a discussion: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=true&query=microplastic%20blood&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=tru...
- mkoryak 5y agoThe question I have after reading this article is what makes
- captainbland 5y agoTwo possibilities: microplastics turn out to be bad, and we're stuck with a generation (at least) of health effects until we can get rid of them. They turn out to be safe (enough) to eat and end up being turned into some kind of food filler in lower end products.
- EGreg 5y agoBut what if they keep building up, like acidification of oceans?
- captainbland 5y agoIt's the same problem: the extraction of fossil fuels. We have plastics because they're close to free as a byproduct of that process and the ocean is acidifying mostly because of dissolved atmospheric CO2.
- m0llusk 5y agosuper powers like telekinesis and eye beams
- titzer 5y agoSpoiler: they are bad.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoEverything is bad in extreme, we care about how bad. E.g. what’s the risk equivalence of X ppm micro-plastics compared to Y amount of sugar intake.
- titzer 5y ago> we care about how bad...compared to Y amount of sugar intake Microplastic pollution has an effect on the entire biosphere of the planet. It's just another factor contributing to the accelerating global extinction event we've set in motion.
- 5y ago
- post_break 5y agoI'm not surprised. I saw a whistle blower at a pig farm showing them grinding up waste food from super markets, packaging and all feeding it to the pigs. They eat all the plastic and junk, we eat them.
- jahnu 5y agoAnd this is why industrial farmers have pursued, and sometimes succeeded, legislation making it a crime to secretly film this sort of thing :(
- politician 5y agoThat’s disgusting. It breathes new life into the biblical rules of abstaining from pork.
- hungryforcodes 5y agoIt surely isn't just pig farms though. Cows, chickens....
- dehrmann 5y agoIt's mostly pigs. Remember that they're omnivores, so they eat the same things humans eat. Cattle eat grass, they're also fed grain commercially, and after the mad cow outbreaks, cattle are no longer fed meat and bone meal. Chickens mostly eat grain and worms, though I assume they're getting some meat and bone meal. Found this on youtube. I grew up around farms, and it looks about right. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrRprZ8C93g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrRprZ8C93g Also, classic scene from Snatch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xUynRdzzsM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xUynRdzzsM
- ornornor 5y agoOf course, there is also the option of not eating animals altogether.
- nemo44x 5y agoRemember reading about ancient people foolishly consuming led or kings that went mad from consuming gold? I guess we are those people for microplastics.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago> kings that went mad from consuming gold I don’t think I have heard of that. Gold is pretty inert.
- squishy47 5y agoI think the common term for gold poisioning is greed.
- dundarious 5y agoNot gold, but similar: consuming silver has a long history, continuing right up to this day, in spite of the fact that it just seems to ruin your complexion. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2297471.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2297471.stm
- MisterTea 5y agoIt's quite possible the gold was alloyed with lead or other toxic/poisonous heavy metals and consumed. Though I have myself not heard of kings ingesting gold directly, though I am sure it has been done for a variety of dubious reasons.
- sph 5y agoI think you mean lead. It was commonly used as a sweetener in Ancient Rome and causes pretty irreversible neural damage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_acetate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_acetate
- SnowProblem 5y agoIt's common in many spices we use today, unfortunately. Consumer Reports published tests on this recently, following-up on other studies, and they have a campaign to get the FDA to regulate heavy metals because so few companies test. Fortunately, you can find brands that do independently test on Amazon, and some brands seem better than others (ie. Simply Organic). https://www.consumerreports.org/food-safety/your-herbs-and-spices-might-contain-arsenic-cadmium-and-lead/ https://www.consumerreports.org/food-safety/your-herbs-and-s...
- snickerbockers 5y agoThis is a bit terrifying for me as one of my favorite hobbies is putting together plastic Gundam model kits, which entails grinding the plastic down to a fine dust with sandpaper and aerosolizing acryllic paints through an airbrush.
- memling 5y agoDo you use a NIOSH (or other regulatory) approved mask? And, editing here, how do you clean up afterward?
- throwawayboise 5y agoMicroplastics as being discussed are much smaller than what you get with sandpaper in model building. If you can see the dust, it's not micro sized.
- derkades 5y agoMaybe they should be called macroplastics because this is not true. First sentence on Wikipedia: > Microplastics are fragments of any type of plastic less than 5 mm (0.20 in) in length,
- dwighttk 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30810626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30810626
- Deadsunrise 5y agoApart from using metal/glass drinking and eating utensils / plates and things, how can one avoid these the best we can?
- agentultra 5y agoIt's probably nearly impossible at this point to avoid them entirely. They're in the air and have been detected in remote parts of the world with little human activity. You could minimize contact more: prefer clothes without synthetic fibres. One possible vector for microplastics could come from dryer lint containing broken down bits of plastics from clothing: acrylic paints off of metal buttons, fibres, plastic buttons, etc. If you eat fish, minimize your intake or consider avoiding them entirely. Another possible vector is accumulation through the food chain. As always: reduce the need or dependence on plastic products in general. Buy produce from local producers and wholesalers instead of grocery chains that wrap food in way too much plastic and packaging. If you shave body hair consider using a straight or safety razor instead of disposable ones. Reduce, reduce, and where you can't: reuse.
- rockostrich 5y agoThis isn't from using plastic utensils. It's from consuming meat that comes from animals that had plastics in their food, drinking local water supplies that have been tainted with microplastics and not treated (from what I've seen I think the only "proper" treatment here is reverse osmosis/distillation), and other random things listed in the article like toothpaste, tattoo ink, and lip gloss.
- Tozen 5y agoWhatever happened to hemp plastics and other natural non-toxic biodegradable plastics? It's amazing how the world is letting the oil companies (who make the plastics) poison us and destroy our environment at will. Microplastics even in the blood of babies... Yet, seems to be no sense of urgency to stop this catastrophe and insanity. It's like driving a car, seeing you are about to go over a cliff, but the foot is still firmly planted on the accelerator.