Do microplastics mess up our minds?

Scientists on the fence about effect on human bodies

Tiny shards of plastic called microplastics have been detected accumulating in human brains, but there is not yet enough evidence to say whether this is doing us harm, experts have said.

As reported by AFP, these mostly invisible pieces of plastic have been found everywhere from the top of mountains to the bottom of oceans, in the air we breathe and the food we eat. They have also been discovered riddled throughout human bodies, inside lungs, hearts, placentas and even crossing the blood-brain barrier.

The increasing ubiquity of microplastics has become a key issue in efforts to hammer out the world’s first plastic pollution treaty, with the latest round of UN talks being held in Geneva next week.

The effects that microplastics and even smaller nanoplastics have on human health is not yet fully understood, but researchers have been working to find out more in this relatively new field.

The most prominent study looking at microplastics in brains was published in the journal Nature Medicine in February.

The scientists tested brain tissue from 28 people who died in 2016 and 24 who died last year in the US state of New Mexico, finding that the amount of microplastics in the samples increased over time.

The study made headlines around the world when the lead researcher, US toxicologist Matthew Campen, told the media that they detected the equivalent of a plastic spoon’s worth of microplastics in the brains.

Campen also told Nature that he estimated the researchers could isolate around 10 grammes of plastic from a donated human brain — comparing that amount to an unused crayon.

Speculation or evidence?

But other researchers have since urged caution about the small study.

“While this is an interesting finding, it should be interpreted cautiously pending independent verification,” toxicologist Theodore Henry of Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University told AFP.

“Currently, the speculation about the potential effects of plastic particles on health go far beyond the evidence,” he added.

Oliver Jones, a chemistry professor at Australia’s RMIT University, told AFP there was “not enough data to make firm conclusions on the occurrence of microplastics in New Mexico, let alone globally”.

He also found it “rather unlikely” that brains could contain more microplastics than has been found in raw sewage – as the researchers had estimated.

Jones pointed out the people in the study were perfectly healthy before they died, and that the researchers acknowledged there was not enough data to show that the microplastics caused harm.