It's been more than 50 years since Dustin Hoffman's character in 'The Graduate' offered a kernel of wisdom on the path to prosperity.
“Plastic,” Mr. Maguire, a starving business executive who offers advice, told him. “Plastics have a great future.”
Plastics have truly changed the game for humanity. From food containers and PVC pipes to polyester clothing and disposable medical products, a variety of cheap and durable plastic products have undoubtedly improved our quality of life.
The problem, as almost everyone knows, is that plastic is forever and very little of it has been recycled. The United Nations estimates that most of the 400 million metric tons produced each year (double the amount produced since 2000) will remain on Earth in some form, broken down by sunlight, wind and the ocean into tiny specks.
About 20 years ago, marine biologist Richard Thompson coined the word “microplastics” when he first noticed a worrying accumulation of tiny plastic particles in marine habitats. Since then, scientists have been discovering these fragments everywhere from remote mountain peaks and the Arctic to the ocean floor.
Over the next decade, scientists began discovering microplastics embedded in a variety of living things, including the seafood we eat. Recently, microplastics have been discovered inside the human body, including in the lungs, blood, feces, and breast milk.
In 2021, Italian researchers identified microplastics in the human placenta for the first time.
An increasingly urgent question for scientists is whether these synthetic foreign substances pose a threat to human health.
“We know that microplastics are ubiquitous and harmful to marine life and fisheries, but the research aspect of their impact on humans is still catching up,” said Imari Walker-Franklin, environmental engineer and chemistry researcher at RTI International. . A person who studies microplastics.
“Plastic People,” a new documentary directed by Ben Addelman and Ziya Tong, examines the new science on microplastics and comes to these troubling conclusions: The potential health risks associated with plastic pollution are becoming harder to ignore.
The film, which premieres Saturday at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, follows the work of microplastics researchers from six countries, including a pair of Turkish scientists who recently said they discovered microplastics inside the human brain. Some particles were found deep inside cancerous brain tumor tissue.
“The fact that the human body is full of microplastics is something that has only recently been discovered, and has implications for the greatest impact of our time,” said Rick Smith, director of the Canadian Climate Institute and member of the Canadian Climate Institute. “I think it’s going to be one of the dominant health and environmental stories,” he said. The film's executive producer. “It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, you can’t protect yourself from this kind of new pollution.”
Microplastics and smaller pieces They should not be confused with nanoplastics, which are typically 5 mm in size and visible to the naked eye, are smaller than a speck of dust and are often an inadvertent by-product of plastic production. Research into the potential health effects of nanoplastics is still in its infancy, at least compared to research on microplastics, a field that has been rapidly expanding over the past few years.
There is limited scientific evidence on the effects of microplastics on humans, at least in the peer-reviewed literature. A 2022 study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology found that patients with inflammatory bowel disease had significantly higher amounts of microplastics in their stool than patients without the disease. A small study from the University of Hawaii published last November documented the increasing presence of microplastics in mothers' placentas.
And people with microplastics in their cardiovascular systems have a higher risk of complications from heart attacks and strokes, according to a paper published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Researchers found that microplastics were embedded in fatty plaques that stuck to the walls of blood vessels, and that patients with plastic-injected plaques were 4.5 times more likely to experience a heart attack, stroke or death compared to patients without plaques. I did. of microplastics. The study included 312 people who had surgery to remove plaque from the carotid arteries in their necks. Researchers followed them for nearly three years.
Dr Giuseppe Paolisso, author of the study, said that microplastics, along with nanoplastics, appeared to make the fatty clumps of plaque weaker, increasing the risk of them breaking away from artery walls and blocking blood flow. It irritates blood vessels, causing heart attack or stroke.
“This is the first evidence that microplastic contamination in the blood is associated with disease,” said Dr. Paolisso, Luigi Vanvitelli Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Campania in Caserta, Italy. He added that more research is needed to confirm the findings.
There are several theories about how microplastics affect the body. These include the potential for inflammation that can be caused by foreign substances staying in human tissue and the toxic compounds that make up many plastics that are known to be harmful to human health.
Nienke Vrisekoop, a microplastics researcher at Utrecht University Medical Center in the Netherlands, said they found that immune cells that came into contact with microplastics died three times faster than those that did not. She said polystyrene, commonly used to produce packaging, is particularly toxic to the immune cells that consume it.
A study conducted by another Dutch researcher, Barbro Melgert, found that microplastics inhibited the development of lung structures grown in his lab. Professor Melgert, a respiratory immunologist at the University of Groningen, said nylon appeared to cause the most damage to lung structures. She found that polyvinyl chloride (PVC) was the least toxic of the plastics she tested.
Professor Melgert is still trying to understand how microplastics affect living cells, but suspects the damage may be related to the various chemicals that can leach from plastic into the human body.
Although she recognizes that the study does not definitively prove harm to humans and does not quantify the risk, previous studies of nylon factory workers have shown widespread lung damage among those exposed to high doses of nylon particles. .
Foreign substances such as asbestos, coal dust and cigarette smoke often pose problems to human health, she noted. “If the particulates are organic and digestible, at least the body can eventually break them down and eliminate them,” Professor Melgert said. “Plastic is different. “It could just stay in the lungs.”
The same goes for microplastics entering the brain. This discovery, arguably the most important discovery in the new film, was made by two Turkish researchers: biologist Sedat Gündoğdu and neurosurgeon Emrah Çeltikçi.
Dr. Gündoğdu, a researcher at Cukurova University, has been studying microplastic pollution since 2016. Over the years, he has collaborated on dozens of peer-reviewed studies documenting microplastics in fisheries, soil, table salt and intravenous fluid sachets, and his alert: It grew with each new discovery.
He said it was only a matter of time before researchers discovered microplastics in the human brain. “It’s scary, but it’s not surprising,” he said.
Of the 15 samples tested so far, six plastic particles were identified in the tissues of two tumor patients, Dr. Gündoğdu said. It is unclear how the fragments entered the brain, but he said they most likely arrived through the blood vessels that feed the tumor, given the documented presence of microplastics in the blood.
Despite the sense of urgency and doom conveyed by “Plastic People,” Mr. Tong, co-director and former host of the Discovery Channel science show “Daily Planet,” said the film was similar to “Silent Spring,” documenting the dangers of pesticides and banning DDT. That was the case in the 1962 book that helped.
At an individual level, she said, this means encouraging consumers to reduce their reliance on single-use plastics, which account for 40% of global plastic production.
But it also means convincing political leaders to take regulatory action. Ms. Tong is now keeping an eye on the United Nations conference in Ottawa next month. There, representatives from 175 countries will resume negotiations on a proposed treaty to curb the explosive growth of plastic pollution. At times, talks were hampered by industry opposition.
“You don’t need an amazing new invention to solve the problem,” Tong said. “We need to use less plastic.”