The fact that there's so much microplastics everywhere that it's hard for us to even study tissue in isolate is already not encouraging.
Also the main finding of concern imo in the original Nature paper wasn't the finding that we have a plastic fork-worth of microplastics in our brains. It's the finding that brain tissue seems to concentrate microplastics at a much higher rate than other tissue in the body
I find it concerning that there seems to be such a concerted effort to downplay the significance of that finding
In this case, the lab gloves are shedding materials that superficially resemble microplastics under a microscope but aren't actually microplastics. (I was concerned about that at first too because of the overlap between food service gloves and lab gloves!)
A couple of months ago there were a bunch of news stories, about how maybe oil companies should be sued, just like tobacco companies were.
Then, suddenly out of nowhere, it's actually the gloves that is the problem. It's an excellent counter to such a movement. The scientists are wrong, you see. Microplastics? Overblown!
The average joe will read only the headline/clickbait, and forever doubt microplastics.
Is that finding robust under the possibility that the microplastics in the sample were introduced by the gloves used to handle the sample? One could, for example, explain that result with a hypothesis that the reason there's more microplastics in brain tissue is that they had more hands touch them with lab gloves than the liver and kidney samples.
It's the finding that brain tissue seems to concentrate microplastics at a much higher rate than other tissue in the body
If I remember correctly, the method they used to detect microplastics, which involves pyrolysis, gives much the same result for lipids (which brain tissue has a lot of) as pure hydrocarbon plastics like PE and PP, because they all feature relatively long hydrocarbon chains and the pyrolysis products will contain the same short-chain hydrocarbons.
I find it concerning that there seems to be such a concerted effort to downplay the significance of that finding
There is nothing to be concerned about. This is just the (re)discovery of basic chemistry and the natural response to misguided alarmism.
Before I ask, I want to disavow any suspicions people may have that I'm a shill for asking, so to borrow from a related subject: I hate the idea of bioaccumulative toxins. 3M and DuPont executives behind not just the original per- and polyfluorinated chemicals, but the replacements like GenX that are basically a nearly identical molecule with just a few atoms changed belong in prison, not in boardrooms, to say nothing of all the people complicit in distributing them in consumer products.
I may have taken the bait from the plastics industry on this one, I really don't know, but wasn't one of the pushbacks something along the lines of "well yes, there are microplastics, and yes, they do accumulate in the body, but you shouldn't worry about it - there isn't really any evidence of systemic harm being caused by them"?
Do you know if there are studies that do show evidence of harm from microplastic accumulation? It sounds really bad at face value, but I still want good, hard evidence before I'm ready to add an industry to my personal list of perpetrators of crimes against humanity.
This is why it is good lab procedure to always "run a blank." A blank is simply a sample that is constructed exactly like a real sample but without the thing you are studying. This way you quickly learn about contamination from tools/gloves/environment etc.
I had strong echoes of a naieve lab experience in the 1970s: testing for organophosphates in seawater at the Forth Estuary was basically impossible except for gross amounts, because the standard analytical glass washing we used contaminated the glassware. You have to maintain a completely independent suite of glassware from pipettes all the way through to reaction vessels, and chromatography cells, and wash them with chromic acid, or special formulations.
(I don't work in this field any more, I was a lowly bottle washer and lab tech on a job creation scheme, I am sure the field has moved forward)
The fact that there's so much microplastics everywhere that it's hard for us to even study tissue in isolate is already not encouraging.
Also the main finding of concern imo in the original Nature paper wasn't the finding that we have a plastic fork-worth of microplastics in our brains. It's the finding that brain tissue seems to concentrate microplastics at a much higher rate than other tissue in the body
I find it concerning that there seems to be such a concerted effort to downplay the significance of that finding
In this case, the lab gloves are shedding materials that superficially resemble microplastics under a microscope but aren't actually microplastics. (I was concerned about that at first too because of the overlap between food service gloves and lab gloves!)
I don't buy the whole premise.
A couple of months ago there were a bunch of news stories, about how maybe oil companies should be sued, just like tobacco companies were.
Then, suddenly out of nowhere, it's actually the gloves that is the problem. It's an excellent counter to such a movement. The scientists are wrong, you see. Microplastics? Overblown!
The average joe will read only the headline/clickbait, and forever doubt microplastics.
If anything I think people who only read the headline will incorrectly assume that gloves are full of microplastics :P
Is that finding robust under the possibility that the microplastics in the sample were introduced by the gloves used to handle the sample? One could, for example, explain that result with a hypothesis that the reason there's more microplastics in brain tissue is that they had more hands touch them with lab gloves than the liver and kidney samples.
What are negative consequences attributed to have microplastics, and have to the compare to the risks associated with say drinking alcohol?
It's the finding that brain tissue seems to concentrate microplastics at a much higher rate than other tissue in the body
If I remember correctly, the method they used to detect microplastics, which involves pyrolysis, gives much the same result for lipids (which brain tissue has a lot of) as pure hydrocarbon plastics like PE and PP, because they all feature relatively long hydrocarbon chains and the pyrolysis products will contain the same short-chain hydrocarbons.
I find it concerning that there seems to be such a concerted effort to downplay the significance of that finding
There is nothing to be concerned about. This is just the (re)discovery of basic chemistry and the natural response to misguided alarmism.
Before I ask, I want to disavow any suspicions people may have that I'm a shill for asking, so to borrow from a related subject: I hate the idea of bioaccumulative toxins. 3M and DuPont executives behind not just the original per- and polyfluorinated chemicals, but the replacements like GenX that are basically a nearly identical molecule with just a few atoms changed belong in prison, not in boardrooms, to say nothing of all the people complicit in distributing them in consumer products.
I may have taken the bait from the plastics industry on this one, I really don't know, but wasn't one of the pushbacks something along the lines of "well yes, there are microplastics, and yes, they do accumulate in the body, but you shouldn't worry about it - there isn't really any evidence of systemic harm being caused by them"?
Do you know if there are studies that do show evidence of harm from microplastic accumulation? It sounds really bad at face value, but I still want good, hard evidence before I'm ready to add an industry to my personal list of perpetrators of crimes against humanity.
Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47561711
This is why it is good lab procedure to always "run a blank." A blank is simply a sample that is constructed exactly like a real sample but without the thing you are studying. This way you quickly learn about contamination from tools/gloves/environment etc.
If microplastics are everywhere in flesh/brains/etc., how do you construct a blank without them? Isn't that the very issue here?
I had strong echoes of a naieve lab experience in the 1970s: testing for organophosphates in seawater at the Forth Estuary was basically impossible except for gross amounts, because the standard analytical glass washing we used contaminated the glassware. You have to maintain a completely independent suite of glassware from pipettes all the way through to reaction vessels, and chromatography cells, and wash them with chromic acid, or special formulations.
(I don't work in this field any more, I was a lowly bottle washer and lab tech on a job creation scheme, I am sure the field has moved forward)