MICROPLASTICS FIND THEIR WAY INTO YOUR GUT, A PILOT STUDY FINDS
In the next 60 seconds, people around the world will purchase 1 million plastic bottles and 2 million plastic bags.
Though it will take more than 1,000 years for most of these items to degrade, many will soon break apart into tiny shards known as microplastics, trillions of which have been showing up in the oceans, fish, tap water and even table salt.
Now, we can add one more microplastic repository to the list: the human gut.
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.
“This is the first study of its kind, so we did a pilot trial to see if there are any microplastics detectable at all,” said Philipp Schwabl, a gastroenterologist at the Medical University of Vienna and lead author of the study. “The results were astonishing.”
There are no certain health
implications for their findings, and they hope to complete a broader study with the methods they have developed.
Microplastics — defined as pieces less than .02 inches long, roughly the size of a grain of rice — have become a major concern for environmental researchers during the past decade. Several studies have found high levels of microplastics in marine life, and last year, microplastics were detected in 83 percent of tap water samples around the world (the highest contamination rate belonged to the United States, where 94 percent of samples were contaminated).
Most microplastics are the unintended result of larger plastics breaking apart, and the United States, Canada and other countries have banned the use of tiny plastic beads in beauty products.
The new paper 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.
“The fact that so many different polymers were measured suggests a wide range of contamination sources,” said Stephanie Wright, an environmental health scientist at Kings College London who was not involved in the study. Two of the eight participants also said they did not consume seafood.