Our brains are full of plastic.
This was Funny news This week I read before receiving dinner, packed in plastic containers, sewn in a plastic bag and accompanied by Styrofoam cups. Great, I thought, that comfort culture is dying.
But is it? This is the problem created for researching our microscopic plastic brown arteries, kidneys and crumbsOur findings Oceans, meal, soil and air Tupperware is associated with small bits. Scientists still don’t know what this plastic do us. And because research takes time, while scientists are trying to answer the question, we continue to breathe, eating small plastics and drinking.
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Why? Regulatory action never really The US plastic industry stopped Light more plastics, clean air and water defenders have tried to deal with industry pollution problems in court and local wages Grassroots Wars To slow down more plants that throw all these chemicals. And now, return to the office, is the President His interests of fossil fuels (with pre-crumbling oil and natural gas), a leader who uses their new capacities Request to use plastic strawsand an administration that bends hell crippling EPA’s mission To keep it safe than empowerment.
Meanwhile, we don’t know what makes us all plastic. And no one else in charge of today.
All that enters our bodies is filtered in our liquids and kidneys, so it may not be a great surprise that plastic bit Find their way in these organs. Equal with our hearts; Microplastics end up in our blood and can be stuck in our squeezing artery. But our brains are designed to store things through something called a blood-brain barrier. Researchers behind the brain plastics examines plastic molecules, walking in fat molecules to penetrate brain cells. And it’s worse that investigators believe they might be microplastic In a whole human brain: 10 grams. Imagine 2.5 tablespoons sugar. Now in plastic subsections. Gross.
They looked at the brains preserved a decade ago and compared them with last brains. The cooler brain had more plastics in them than older brains. And yes, they told the whole plastic that the brains and manipulate brains, if the pipes and such leachives are plastic. So by year, more and more plastics surrounded, our bodies are minimal, depending on the storage tanks and the worst, any attack.
How is this happening? Chemistry. Capitalism. Comfort culture. Plastic, oil refineries to isolate hydrocarbons and then crack these hydrocarbons in smaller compounds like ethylene or propylene. Then they make a small chemistry that sticks to these smaller compounds that are stuck in repeated structures called polymers. These polymers juflate with other chemicals that provide different properties, bends, hard plastics, heat and other things resistant to plastics.
Every year, millions of plastic waste ends in the ocean, some plastics decomposed 1,000 years. Over time, larger plastic pieces break into microplastics, which can be accumulated in marine life and may be included in the human food chain.
In the face of renewable energy and in the face of electricity, loading throughout the country, lowering gas applications, our fossil fuels industry is diversified. And great success; The US produced In 2023 130 billion plastic plastic. Chemists try to find plastic (and break) in a clearer and greener ways, but it is its manufacture Dirty process. So here we are surrounded by these things that will never disappear, slowly builds inside us.
Thousands of plastics exist, each with its own recipe for chemicals. The EPA generally regulates individual chemicals, not the set of chemical products according to the product, each component of plastics is basically impossible. Instead, below Action to control toxic substancesThe Biden Administration began the process of regulating the chemicals Precursors also plastics and add-ons. But this process may take years and looks like its fate in the new administration. The single chemical view of the ep was called tobacco researchers A new American scientific part Whack-a-mole strategy. Here are tweaks, there, and now the EPA has more plastic mole whack.
So many moles, a boost to build more refiners and ours General disability for the recycling of plasticAnd here we are slowly Homo plasticus.
Scary, yes. But dangerous?
Probably.
Microscots are the study of study showing that they affect biochemical changes cells and animal that we also see that gizzelas with different diseases. All said, cells are not people, and the animals are patterns for everyone who is happening in people.
Recently, the Italian research team Continue 257 people He had a plate in their carotal arteries. The 20 percent of the research had a heart attack on the microplastic-laden plate, stroke or died almost three years after they did not comply with 7.5% of people. In cell research, those with microplastic in them were tending to show biochemical signatures. And these people who had microplastic artery in their carotids also showed the same signatures more often than people.
So yes, the correlation does not equal causality, these are disturbing symbols. However, we live in a country that believes heartily, we continue to do what we represent all this. While people In the shadows of plastic plants Get cancer in Louisiana. The fish, the meat had to save our hearts, It is packed with plastic We know now to end our arteries. Are the brains of people with dementia full of plastic.
So recycle all your plastic bowls! Cancel food delivery! Take the bags to the grocery store! Wonderful ways of changing the responsibility of the environmental calamity of individuals. Do not solve the problem of unnecessary and destructive plastic sheet, tell people to stop using the product.
In the meantime, Whole countries They are trying to stop using so many plastics. And some places in the US ban some plastics. We could be like Maine, which makes great companies that use plastic Help pay to deal with the waste. The responsibility of plastic is not only consumers.
The photos contains beaches covered with plastic stones, beaches, flooded water bottles and technology products in the products. Chemistry is a beautiful thing. As for the plastic, when will we be responsible for the petrochemical industry?
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views indicated by the author or authors are not necessarily American scientific.
