United States: A new study found that human brain samples collected in early 2024 had more tiny plastic particles compared to samples from eight years ago. The study, which hasn’t been reviewed by experts yet, shows that people’s brains had about 4,800 micrograms of plastic per gram of brain tissue. This is 0.5% of the brain’s weight.
Matthew Campen, the lead researcher from the University of New Mexico, shared these surprising results.
Increased Exposure but Unknown Impact
As compared to the autopsy brain samples from the year 2016 and that’s about almost 50 percent higher,” Campen said.
“That would mean that our brains today are 99.5 percent brain and the rest in is plastic stored in this.
Also this increase however only shows the exposure and does not provide the information about the brain damage said Phoebe Stapleton who is an associate professor of the pharmacology and toxicology at the Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey who was not involved in the preprint.
As mentioned in CNN Health, “It is still an open question whether these particles are exchangeable in human body moving from the brain to the rest of the whole body and vice versa or they accumulate in the neurological tissues and contribute to disease,” she said in an email. “More investigation has to be done to know with which sort of cellular receptors the particles are engaging and whether that leads to a toxicological effect. ”
Plastic Found in Various Body Parts
The brain samples had between 7% and 30% more of the microplastic particles and fibres than the corresponding samples of the cadavers’ kidneys and liver, the preprint reveals.
“These plastics have been identified in the human heart, the great vessels, lungs, liver, testes, gastrointestinal tract and in the placenta,” said Dr. Philip Landrigan, a paediatrician and professor of biology at Boston College, who is the director at the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good; and the Global Observatory on Planetary Health.
‘You can’t scare the hell out of people because the science here is still immature, and no one in the year 2024 will live without plastic,’ added Landrigan, who did not participate in the preprint.