Its the height of summer and we hope you are enjoying a well deserved break. Maybe you will even have time and the energy to read this month's ramble about microplastics.
This post was written by Dr. Andrej Kržan, Chief Science Officer and Cofounder of PlanetCare
A few days ago the BBC posted an interesting article about the effects of microplastics on human health. (Read it here).
It is of course very hard to conclusively determine the effect of small plastic particles on your health since we are exposed to low concentrations for extremely long times – at least decades for most but their whole life for some. This exposure is additionally combined with our own personal conditions – from personal sensitivities to habits such as smoking, a specific diet, drinking alcohol, exposure to air pollution, need to take drugs etc. So we get a mixture of many factors that get all tangled up and become very, VERY difficult to dissentangle. Simply put, microplastics are just one contribution to the cocktail of »stuff« we are constantly exposed to.
The BBC article certainly apprecites this difficulty but it also presents the growing number of scientific results that suggest a link between microplastics and negative effects on human health. Signs of microplastics have by now been found in all possible parts of the human body from the liver to the brain and bones. Cutting edge studies are now progressing to linking the presence of microplastics to increased risks of health problems.
For example, significantly increased indicators for microplastics were found in the brains of patients with dementia. Similar links were made between increased microplastic presence and cardiovascular problems. At the moment no study makes a bold statement that microplastics are indeed the cause of these health problems, but each study brings one more dot to the picture that is slowly emerging.
Just like each image on your screen or in the paper you are reading is composed of dots. Each dot by itself does not reveal the image and even a number of them might be insufficient. But once we have enough, suddenly, the image appears for everybody to see. That is exactly what is happening with studies of health effects from microplastics. Each study is a dot and slowly, slowly the understanding that microplastics – present everywhere – are a danger to our health, is emerging.
I will leave you here. Read the BBC article and make up your own mind. (Read it here).
And if you agree consider how you can reduce your own exposure to microplastics and contribute to reducing microplastic pollution that will benefit all of humanity as well as the environment, plants and animals that had nothing to do with creating plastics but bear the consequences perhaps even more tha we do.
Summer is a great time to think about things we will do next! Enjoy it!
At Planetcare we develop solutions that help solve the problem of microplastic pollution. As 35% of microplastics in the oceans coming from washing machines (synthetic clothes shed microfibers during washing), we have developed an easy to use and super effective microfiber filter that captures 98% of these microfibers. It's a small but effective step towards a cleaner future.
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