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Microplastics Found In Human Stools For the First Time (nytimes.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the stinky-news dept.

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.

7 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. So What by labnet · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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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    1. Re:So What by quantaman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

      Some go out, we don't really know if they all go out. And even if they all go out we don't really know everything they do along the way. Do they produce toxins, produce bio-active molecules, or even have a physical effect on biological processes?

      My understanding is that most researchers think they're benign... but there's a lot of weird byproducts of our modern economy making it into our bodies, it's hard to imagine there are no negative consequences.

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    2. Re:So What by religionofpeas · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Plastics don't make people fat. People get fat because they eat too much. In theory it is possible that certain chemicals in the plastic cause people to eat more, but it is much more likely that hyper-palatable processed foods can do this job on their own, without need for plastics. The food industry employs very smart people who's job it is to get you hooked on their products.

    3. Re:So What by Crashmarik · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No they don't. Your citation basically says that "people got fat because they got fat". It identifies no underlying cause.

      People got fat because they weren't going out and exercising as much.

      Well lets see what you had happening around 1980
      You had video games becoming a big thing.
      You had more television via cable in 1980, back when All In The Family was the best show on television and the original Battlestar Galactica was the best science fiction, there really wasn't much pull from the idiot box All of a sudden you had HBO playing things you actually wanted to see and without commercials then Skinemax came along and started piping just short of hardcore porn into the home yeah that changed the dynamic.

  2. Re:Little thought experiment here by techno-vampire · · Score: 5, Insightful

    eggs in in plastic foam carton

    Unless you make a habit of eating the eggshells, that's not going to be an issue.

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  3. Re: Coca Cola in plastic vs glass by MachineShedFred · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Except it is highly recyclable. Glass just happens to be more expensive than plastic.

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  4. Re: It is High Fructose Corn Syrup by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?