At this point, Microplastics pollution should probably be included
The average brain weighs 1300-1400 grams. If 0.5% of that is plastic by weight, your brain contains 6.5 - 7 grams of plastic. The average plastic credit card weighs 5 grams.
Jesus christ. I really thought that headline was exaggerated, but no, the brain samples they tested actually ended up being 0.5% plastic by weight. That's seriously disturbing, I really would have thought the blood-brain barrier would do a better job of keeping plastics out.
It comes from car tires, single-use plastics teflon pans, and plastic food containers. Plastic items that are meant to last a long time aren’t shedding as much.
So if you want to reduce your microplastic contributions, avoid driving, avoid single-use plastics, don’t buy non-stick pans, and use glass food containers.
You're saying that the volume of plastic inside your skull is the equivalent of a credit card.. pretty sure you would have issues just from the additional volume of any substance inside your skull.
Or is this happening from conception? So your skull just grows a little more to allow the additional volume of plastic?
I'm saying the weight is, and it's not just my skull, it's everyone's skull. It's likely we're all experiencing those issues. It's also not up there in a single slab, but embedded throughout, which hopefully mitigates that issue.
A study under peer review claims those with dementia are more likely to have more plastic in their brains than the average person.
From my understanding of the study they used an unverified method on a small part of the brain to get the amount of plastic in the entire brain. Which can be misleading because if you only look at the parts of the brain that are microplastics, the brain is 100% plastic. There hasn't been widespread replication of the results yet either nor has the paper been peer reviewed.
I'm sceptical especially with the microplastic doomer narrative going around. As far as I know the danger of microplastics on the human body is yet to be determined. But it's definitely alarming I just don't think it's responsible to be saying there's a credit card in your brain.
I gave the study a read. It's in preprint, it's yet to be peer reviewed and the method they used is atypical. Yeah I think disbelief is a pretty reasonable response since it's hard to imagine that much plastic wouldn't be making noticeable changes in behavior/physiology. But it's possible and the research seems rigorous