Reduce your exposure to microplastics

Q: I am freaked out about all the talk of microplastics everywhere. What’s the bottom line and how can I reduce my exposure? — Casey T, Baltimore

A: Around 380 million tons of plastic are produced annually, according to Plastic Oceans International.

It is used to package food, drinks and medicines, and in making fabrics, toys, tools, housewares, hospital equipment and much more.

Once scientists started looking at what happens to plastic when it begins to break down into tiny micro — and super-tiny nanoparticles — they discovered it in human blood, lungs, guts and feces.

A National Institutes of Health study found that a liter of bottled water contains nearly 250,000 plastic bits.

An observational study reveals “jagged-edged” bits of micro-and macro plastics were lodged in the lining of blood vessels of 58 percent of patients who came in to have a procedure to clear plaque from their carotid artery. And those folks had a 4.5 times higher risk of a heart attack, stroke or dying during the next three years.

Clearly it’s important to avoid plastic packaging for foods you buy, to use glass to store food at home, and avoid plastic water bottles.

You can also remove up to 90 percent of micro-and nano-plastics from your drinking water with a simple two-step process of boiling and then filtering the cooled water, according to a study in NEJM.

Q: What I hear about artificial intelligence is confusing. Is it the end of the world as we know it or the answer to all our health care worries? — Elise R., Lexington, Kentucky

A: There are lots of potential hazards with AI that have to do with deceiving people, manipulating information, and the fact that its conclusions may be based on data that are not representative of the people they are being applied to.

However, it is undeniable that what the American Medical Association is calling Augmented Intelligence can, in the hands of knowledgeable, trained scientists, speed the analysis of vast amounts of data and allow for the discovery of new ways to diagnose and treat a wide variety of conditions.

For example, at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, physicians say that when AI is applied to neurosurgery, doctors can better create personalized treatment plans by analyzing patient data, improving surgical precision and improving post-operative care.