How Plastic Created One of the Most Dire Crises Humanity Faces Today

“The researchers found that the particles had begun to bioaccumulate in every organ, including the brain, as well as in bodily waste.”

Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

It was one damn startling study:

“The researchers found that the particles had begun to bioaccumulate in every organ, including the brain, as well as in bodily waste.”

Thus reads a University of Rhode Island analysis of research on microplastics by a team of their scientists just published in the International Journal of Molecular Science. The URI team fed mice microplastics via drinking water at levels comparable to high levels of human exposure, and this week the university reported:

“They found that microplastic exposure induces both behavioral changes and alterations in immune markers in liver and brain tissues. The study mice began to move and behave peculiarly, exhibiting behaviors akin to dementia in humans. The results were even more profound in older animals.”

As always with pollutants, there’s a political aspect to the problem of microplastics. But first, let’s look at what these things are and why they should concern us.

Microplastics are plastic particles smaller than 5 millimeters (about the diameter of a pencil eraser); nanoplastics are a subset of the category but are smaller than 1 micron (human hair typically is between 50 and 120 microns wide); they’re invisible to the naked eye and usually can’t even be seen with a simple microscope.

Most often, these particles are created by the breakdown or erosion of plastic, whether it be plastic packaging shedding fragments into the food or liquid products it holds, or waste plastic breaking down into the environment.

They are often small enough to get inside our individual cells. And they’ve been found in every organ ever measured.

Most of the concern about the human health impact of microplastics is really about nanoplastics, or microplastics approaching that size. As a result, when popular non-scientific media refer to microplastics in the context of human health, they’re generally referring instead to nanoplastics.

Microplastics and nanoplastics can have a wide variety of negative effects on animal metabolism. In humans, there are studies showing they can contribute to or cause everything from heart attacks and strokes to cancer and dementia.

Cancer may be where the microplastics crisis is most visible right now, however.

For example, the past few decades have seen an explosion of colorectal cancer among young people: it’s now the leading cause of cancer deaths in people under 50. A study published in JAMA’s journal Surgery found:

“Based on current trends, in 2030 the incidence rate for colon and rectal cancer will increase by 90.0% and 124.2% for patients 20 to 34 years of age and by 27.7% and 46.0% for patients 35 to 49 years of age.”

Several recent studies have unearthed possible connections between microplastics in food and water and this scourge.

One study, titled “Could Microplastics Be a Driver for Early Onset Colorectal Cancer?” and published in the journal Cancers posits a mechanical cause for the cancers; the microplastics puncture and break down the mucosal lining of the gut and expose its cells directly to food and gastric juices, causing inflammation that in turn leads to cancer.

Another study, published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, looked at microplastics from e-waste sites and posits the chemicals that make up the tiny plastic particles themselves — along with their ability to absorb other oil-based toxins — may also be contributing to the increase in colorectal cancers.

Microscopic nanoparticles are the most efficient at absorbing carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), presumably because they have the largest surface area relative to their overall mass:

“Significantly, higher adsorption of PAHs was found when the microplastic particles were smaller than 5 mm and prolonged stay of microplastics in water. The adsorption capacity of small size microplastic particles has showed highest adsorption capacity of 110 μg g−1 which is about 40% higher than the big size particles.”

Additionally, there are the chemicals in the microplastics themselves: over 10,000 different chemicals are used to make, color, rigidify and mold plastics, with over 2,400 already identified as “toxic” or “known to disrupt endocrine or hormonal systems.”

It’s not just colorectal cancer, though, that is apparently being caused or exacerbated by microplastics. The same mechanisms of action (mechanical and chemical) appear to link microplastic ingestion to a whole variety of medical conditions.

A 2021 Dutch study concluded:

“Once in contact with epithelial linings in the lung or intestine, or after being internalized, microplastics may cause physical, chemical, and microbiological toxicity, which could also act cumulatively. Several in vitro (i.e., human cell culture) and in vivo rodent studies indicate the potential of inhaled or ingested microplastics to cause a variety of biological effects, including physical (particle) toxicity, leading to oxidative stress, secretion of cytokines, cellular damage, inflammatory and immune reactions, and DNA damage, as well as neurotoxic and metabolic effects.”

Particles can be inhaled, eaten, or consumed in liquids. Most people get them all three ways.

There’s new evidence they can even cause or increase the lethality of breast cancers. A study published in Nature Briefing Cancer concluded:

“We found that moderate amounts of PPMPs [polypropylene microplastics] significantly accelerated the cell cycle of cancer cells and enhanced the secretion of interleukin 6 (IL-6) in the human breast cancer cell lines… Consequently, chronic exposure to PPMPs may increase the risk of cancer progression and metastasis.”

And these particles are everywhere. In Antarctica, they’ve even found them in the bodies of baby penguins:

“Not even four weeks old, Gentoo penguin chicks already have large amounts of microplastics in their digestive tract, especially polyethylene, a study shows. The high number of particles – 27 per chick on average – surprised even the Korean research team.”

One study found an average of 325 nanoplastic particles per liter of bottled water; another found bottles of drinking water for sale that contained 10,000 invisible plastic particles each.

Tap water all over the world was also found to contain nanoplastic particles, although generally in concentrations well below a few dozen particles per liter.

They also show up in soft drinks and processed foods. A University of North Dakota study found an average of 101 particles per liter of bottled soft drinks. McGill University researchers found that a single plastic teabag (they’re increasingly common) could release as many as 3 billion nanoplastic particles into a single cup of tea.

Given that, imagine how much microplastic is ending up in the food you’re eating when it comes packaged in plastic and gets microwaved either in your home or at the restaurant, wherever you ate it.

A study published in the journal Environmental Sciences Technology looked at 3,600 processed food samples (based on statistics suggesting most Americans eat about 15 percent of their diet as processed foods) and found these annual numbers:

“Evaluating approximately 15% of Americans’ caloric intake, we estimate that annual microplastics consumption ranges from 39,000 to 52,000 particles depending on age and sex. These estimates increase to 74,000 and 121,000 when inhalation is considered. Additionally, individuals who meet their recommended water intake through only bottled sources may be ingesting an additional 90,000 microplastics annually, compared to 4,000 microplastics for those who consume only tap water.”

It’s a not-inconceivable possibility that microplastics could bring about the demise of much of the human race. They’re now known to affect fertility, as well as sex hormones, and may play a role in the radical drop in male fertility the entire world has seen over the past two decades.

To the extent that they can damage reproductive-cell DNA, they could be causing mutations and genetically-transmitted diseases that will live on in the human race for millennia.

While research continues on the biological impacts of ingesting microplastics, the politics of the substances are complex. The plastics business is the 8th largest industry in America, employing roughly a million people and generating just short of a half-trillion dollars annually.

And there’s already no shortage of microplastics in the biosphere. As a separate study by the University of Rhode Island noted:

“Two University of Rhode Island researchers estimate that the top 5 centimeters (2 inches) of the floor of Narragansett Bay now contain more than 1,000 tons of microplastics, and that buildup has occurred in just the last 10 to 20 years.”

But doing something — anything — about it has turned out to be a serious political challenge.

Since five Republicans on the US Supreme Court legalized political bribery with their corrupt Citizens United decision, the industry has made good use of its lobbying dollars. About a dozen Republican-controlled states have passed ALEC- and industry-recommended laws banning the regulation of plastic items, including products that shed micro- and/or nanoplastics.

When little Bisbee, Arizona banned plastic bags, for example, Republicans in the state legislature passed an ALEC-proposed law preempting the right of any city in the state to ban them. Now, no city in Arizona — nor in about a dozen other states — can ban plastic bags or other things that contribute to microplastics in their environment.

Outside of Obama’s 2015 ban on the intentional insertion of microplastics in cosmetics, foods, and toothpaste, there are currently no federal standards that regulate microplastics, in large part because of the pressure from and power of the industry’s lobbyists. The only state to even require microplastics testing for drinking water is California, with a new law that went into effect in September of last year.

As a result, until there’s a large enough Democratic majority in the House and Senate to overturn Citizens United and outlaw political bribery, we’re on our own.

To reduce their microplastics load, many people now filter their tap water and use stainless steel or glass water bottles, glasses, and utensils. They avoid processed foods, and frozen foods packaged in plastic.

Many of the food products (sauces, salad dressings, drinks, frozen vegetables, meats, etc.) sold in restaurants — particularly fast-food joints — are shipped in plastic-lined boxes, and beverage dispensing machines use plastic hoses: people concerned about microplastics stick with tap water and try to cook at home as much as possible, using fresh foods as raw ingredients.

And, when possible, they eat organically or locally produced foods: one report that went viral on social media found that hogs in a factory farm were being fed out-of-date packaged foods like bread and hot-dog buns with the plastic wrappers still on them: microplastics now show up in the flesh of many meats.

The great message that the Native Americans who inspired the Founders of this nation tried to teach us for hundreds of years has been ignored: the Earth is a living thing. We have been poisoning her relentlessly for two centuries: first with fossil fuels, and then, starting in a big way in the 1950s, with plastic. Now comes the reckoning.

Republicans are fond of pushing libertarianism, the idea that the “free market” will solve all problems if we only unleashed the power of billionaires and giant corporations by removing government regulations and protections for labor.

To a considerable extent, that’s the situation in America with microplastics (the EU is currently debating their first serious regulation of microplastics), and will be as long as the GOP can block legislation via the filibuster.

Thus, we’re pretty much only left with the option of telling our friends and family about what may well be one of the most dire public health crises humanity (and the rest of the animals of the world) have ever faced.

Pass it along.