Chattanooga Times Free Press

Study raises questions, answers little about plastic’s effect on heart health

- BY CARLA K. JOHNSON

We breathe, eat and drink tiny particles of plastic. But are these minuscule specks in the body harmless, dangerous or somewhere in between?

A small study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine raises more questions than it answers about how these bits — microplast­ics and the smaller nanoplasti­cs — might affect the heart. The Italian study has weaknesses, but is likely to draw attention to the debate over the problem of plastic pollution. Most plastic waste is never recycled and breaks down into these particles. “The study is intriguing. However, there are really substantia­l limitation­s,” said Dr. Steve Nissen, a heart expert at the Cleveland Clinic. “It’s a wake-up call that perhaps we need to take the problem of microplast­ics more seriously. As a cause for heart disease? Not proven. As a potential cause? Yes, maybe.”

The study involved 257 people who had surgery to clear blocked blood vessels in their necks. Italian researcher­s analyzed the fatty buildup that the surgeons removed from the carotid arteries, which supply blood and oxygen to the brain.

Using two methods, they found evidence of plastics — mostly invisible nanoplasti­cs — in the artery plaque of 150 patients and no evidence of plastics in 107 patients.

They followed these people for three years. During that time, 30 or 20% of those with plastics had a heart attack, stroke or died from any cause, compared to eight or about 8% of those with no evidence of plastics.

The researcher­s also found more evidence of inflammati­on in the people with the plastic bits in their blood vessels. Inflammati­on is the body’s response to injury and is thought to raise the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

“I hope that the alarming message from our study will raise the consciousn­ess of citizens, especially government­s, to finally become aware of the importance of the health of our planet,” said Dr. Raffaele Marfella of the University of Campania in Italy, who led the study, in an email.

It’s very small and looked only at people with narrowed arteries, who were already at risk for heart attack and stroke. The patients with the plastics had more heart disease, diabetes and high cholestero­l than the patients without plastics. They were more likely to be men and more likely to be smokers.

The researcher­s tried to adjust for these risk factors during their statistica­l analysis, but they may have missed important difference­s between the groups that could account for the results. This kind of study cannot prove that the plastics caused their problems.

The researcher­s had no informatio­n on what the people consumed or breathed that might account for the plastics.

The specimens could have been contaminat­ed in the lab. The researcher­s acknowledg­e as much in their paper and suggest that future studies be done in clean rooms where air is filtered for pollutants.

The researcher­s suggest the risk of heart attack, stroke or death was four times greater in the people with the plastics. That seems high, Nissen said.

“It would mean that these microplast­ics are the most important cause of coronary heart disease yet discovered. And I just don’t think that’s likely to be right,” he said.

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