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Microplastics Found In Human Stools For the First Time (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: In a pilot study with a small sample size, researchers looked for microplastics in stool samples of eight people from Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom and Austria. To their surprise, every single sample tested positive for the presence of a variety of microplastics (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). In a pilot study with a small sample size, researchers looked for microplastics in stool samples of eight people from Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom and Austria. To their surprise, every single sample tested positive for the presence of a variety of microplastics.
The new paper, which was presented Monday at a gastroenterology conference in Vienna, could provide support for marine biologists who have long warned of the dangers posed by microplastics in our oceans. But the paper suggests that microplastics are entering our bodies through other means, as well. To conduct the study, they selected volunteers from each country who kept food diaries for a week and provided stool samples. Dr. Philipp Schwabl, a researcher at the Medical University of Vienna who led the study, and his colleagues analyzed the samples with a spectrometer. Up to nine different kinds of plastics were detected, ranging in size from .002 to .02 inches. The most common plastics detected were polypropylene and polyethylene terephthalate -- both major components of plastic bottles and caps.
The new paper, which was presented Monday at a gastroenterology conference in Vienna, could provide support for marine biologists who have long warned of the dangers posed by microplastics in our oceans. But the paper suggests that microplastics are entering our bodies through other means, as well. To conduct the study, they selected volunteers from each country who kept food diaries for a week and provided stool samples. Dr. Philipp Schwabl, a researcher at the Medical University of Vienna who led the study, and his colleagues analyzed the samples with a spectrometer. Up to nine different kinds of plastics were detected, ranging in size from .002 to .02 inches. The most common plastics detected were polypropylene and polyethylene terephthalate -- both major components of plastic bottles and caps.
Plastics go in, plastics go out? Whats the problem?
Do they get into the blood stream? Do they degrade in the body and produce toxins?
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The plastic taste I find annoying has to be coming from something.
Your imagination.
HCFS certainly plays its part, but not because it's any worse for you than sugar, because it's cheaper. Companies started putting it in everything, so our consumption skyrocketed.
eggs in in plastic foam carton
Unless you make a habit of eating the eggshells, that's not going to be an issue.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
BPA we pretty much know how to deal with. Dont store the cans in hot places like a closed car, and dont cook your food in the can. Personally id rather a BPA lined can, at least i know what i am dealing with than some mystery "BPA free" lining. Guess what when they take the BPA out of the plastic they replace it with some other chemical, likely not as well studied as BPA is. They dont just say oh we're just going to keep making the plastic exactly the same as before and just not put the BPA in the mix. The BPA served a purpose and you cannot just take it out without replacing it with something else that serves that same purpose as closely as possible.. If you could just take it out and not put something else in it;s place, the plastics companies would have done it long ago since that means they were just spending money on an ingredient in the mix that was not needed.
You gotta think with your head sometimes. If they could have saved a buck taking BPA out of the mix it would have already been done a LONG time ago. They just replaced it with something else when every mommy on social media started whining and spreading around scare mongering stories.
Except it is highly recyclable. Glass just happens to be more expensive than plastic.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Fast wasnâ(TM)t a common meal until the 80s.
Yes it was. Fast food took off in the 1950s, and spread in the 1960s and 1970s. The result was almost NO increase in obesity. Then in the 1980s, with no significant change in fast food availability, obesity rates dramatically increased.
People werenâ(TM)t slurping frappucinos all day.
Frappuccinos were not a fad until well into the 1990s, a decade into the obesity epidemic.
People worked active jobs not sitting in offices.
Jobs were becoming less "active" for decades, with no increase in obesity. There was no significant change in the early 1980s.
Itâ(TM)s calories.
Of course, but saying "people got fat because they ate more" does nothing to explain WHY obesity suddenly skyrocketed with no significant change in availability or affordability of food, no significant change in opportunities for exercise, etc. Why did a hundred million people suddenly start eating more?