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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.

18 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. Coca Cola in plastic vs glass by drnb · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I always preferred the Mexican imported Coca Cola in glass bottles. I suspect the taste improvement was not from cane sugar vs fructose syrup but rather due to glass bottle vs plastic. Beer also tastes better in glass bottles, cans often have an inner plastic coating on the metal. I wonder if the some of the plastic particles are coming from such food packaging? The plastic taste I find annoying has to be coming from something.

    1. 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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    2. Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I work in the industry. All aluminum and steel cans have an internal coating. Some types are more visible but they all have it.

    3. Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Informative

      Most probably it has to do with the different source of sugar. Coca Cola tastes different in every country regardless of which bottle you get it in. As for beer it could very likely be the case that the beer in the can is fresher. Glass bottles are not ideal for beer in the way they are stored and exposed to light. Beer is sensitive to light which is why many beers use as dark of a glass as possible. In cans beer is kept fully airtight, light tight, and nitrogen blanketed. I always ask this question during brewery tours and the answer is always the same: cans are better for the beer, but our customers think it's cheap which is why we ship it in bottles instead.

      Now just remember this tibbit next time you're drinking a Corona. Maybe it's not a bad beer that is only remotely palatable when combined with lemon, but rather it just went off on account of ignoring hundreds of years of experience of exposing beer to light in clear glass bottles :-)

  2. Olympics of poop by binarybum · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hope they looked for more than just plastics. The international scope of this study could finally allow us to complete a poop olympics of sorts. Whose poop had the highest amount of micro gold? What about the highest amount of bitcoin (is that in poop?) Which country had the runniest poop? The highest tensile strength? And finally, are the Russians doping their poop?

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  3. 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 ArylAkamov · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Depending on the plastic, it can mimic estrogen when ingested (See: Xenoestrogens).
      I suspect this has a lot to do with our recent strange cultural changes.

    2. 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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    3. 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.

    4. 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.

  4. But we don't know by fredrated · · Score: 4, Funny

    how much plastic there was in people's stool before the industrial revolution!

    1. Re:But we don't know by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Careful! You're going to be labelled a plastic poop denier!

  5. It is High Fructose Corn Syrup by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It is caused by High Fructose Corn Syrup consumption and obeisity does correlate directly to that:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup

    See the graph showing the sharp rise in total corn based sugars in the 1980's and 1990s, in the *USA*.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup#/media/File:US_Sweetener_consumption,_1966_to_2013.svg

    Your idea of "unsupported by evidence" is laughable.
    HFCS is pure calories in carbohydrate form. The exact thing needed to get fat.
    HFCS's consumption rise corresponding to people getting super fat.

    Whereever HFCS consumption increase, so the people became fat.

    1. Re:It is High Fructose Corn Syrup by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      It is caused by High Fructose Corn Syrup consumption and obeisity does correlate directly to that

      Correlation is not causation. HFCS consumption went up in America along with obesity. But many other countries also became obese, some worse than America, and they did NOT consume much HFCS, because they have no corn lobby pushing it.

      Dietary surveys of Americans show a weak correlation between HFCS and obesity. Many people that avoid it got fat. Many people drinking several sodas per day stayed skinny. Some sodas are made with cane sugar, and people that drink those get fat at the same rate as people that drink HFCS soda.

      There is plenty of evidence that all types of sugar are bad for you in excess. There is not much evidence that HFCS is worse than other sugars.

      Animal studies are inconclusive. Some show a correlation of HFCS with weight gain, but most do not.

      NIH: Lack of evidence that HFCS causes obesity

      List of countries by BMI. America is 17th.

    2. 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?

    3. Re:It is High Fructose Corn Syrup by dunkelfalke · · Score: 3, Interesting

      and they did NOT consume much HFCS, because they have no corn lobby pushing it

      About that. Other countries use the same shit, just not necessarily made from maize. Here in Germany, for example, it is called "glucose-fructose syrup" and is usually made from potato starch, but the difference between that and HFCS is miniscule. From my personal experience American food is way sweeter compared to the more or less similar stuff in Germany, though, that might be key difference.

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  6. Little thought experiment here by Crashmarik · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Take a look at what the food you eat comes packaged in.

    I'll take mine as an example
    Breakfast: Oatmeal, bacon and eggs. Oatmeal packeaged in a plastic container, bacon in a plastic pouch, eggs in in plastic foam carton
    Lunch: Salami onion and cheese on rye (good jewish rye not that supermarket crap): Salami plastic pouch again, cheese plastic pouch, rye bread paper bag
    Dinner: Stir fried vegetables (from my garden)

    Of that only the food I grew myself, and the Rye I got from a kosher baker didn't have plastic involved, and I am not all that sure about the Rye. Is it any wonder there's plastic in poop ?

    The question is what effect does it have ? Probably none as food grade plastics are indigestible and aren't going to be spending that much time in your digestive tract. Kids after all have been eating the damndest things since time immemorial

    1. 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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