this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
509 points (98.1% liked)

World News

43783 readers
3056 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world

Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
NewsAutoMod@lemmy.world
jordanlund@lemmy.world
Tenthrow@lemmy.world
little_cow@lemmy.world
lemmyAtom@lemmy.world
509
Scientists issue dire warning: Microplastic accumulation in human brains escalating (www.psypost.org)
submitted 1 day ago by Sunshine@lemmy.ca to c/world@lemmy.world
163 comments fedilink hide all child comments
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] TaviRider@reddthat.com 41 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

The original paper about microplastics in the brain seems to have a serious methodological flaw that undermines the conclusion that our brains are swimming in microplastics.

“False positives of microplastics are common to almost all methods of detecting them,” Jones says. “This is quite a serious issue in microplastics work.”

Brain tissue contains a large amount of lipids, some of which have similar mass spectra as the plastic polyethylene, Wagner says. “Most of the presumed plastic they found is polyethylene, which to me really indicates that they didn’t really clean up their samples properly.” Jones says he shares these concerns.

This is from other microplastics researchers. See this article. So before we panic about this, let’s wait for some independent replication and more agreement in the scientific community.

Microplastics are a serious concern, and we need to deal with plastic pollution. Let’s just stick to high quality science while we do that.

[–] Hobo@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago

Psypost is like the the Daily Mail of science journalism. Kind of just dismiss everything I see from them at this point. Thank you for the rebuttal.

[–] Killer_Tree@sh.itjust.works 14 points 8 hours ago

Thank you for the nuance. Bad data and hyperbole doesn't help what I agreed is a serious issue.

[–] Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 27 points 11 hours ago

I don't think this is the kind of neuroplasticity we're supposed to be aiming for.

[–] krystaal@lemmy.wtf 14 points 11 hours ago (4 children)

Scary. Is plastic more or less expensive than cardboard/paper? I'm not sure if it's where I live, but I've noticed that during my childhood, (example) most takeout containers would be either foil or paper. Now, most of them are plastic, even the cups that contain sauces. I don't get why plastic has been embraced so much when the alternatives were far easier to recycle.

[–] volvoxvsmarla@lemm.ee 1 points 4 hours ago

I'm not so sure what cardboard/paper you mean? If you mean something like the paper cups that coffee comes in, they also contain plastic. Dirty paper/cardboard can also not be recycled, so your pizza carton ends up in a landfill or burned. And what do you mean by foil? Genuinely curious.

In my area a lot of takeout places now offer reusable options for a deposit. Usually it is a cardboard with plastic lining container if it is one way. Except the Asian takeout places, they are all over the place from classic black plastic to aluminum containers to styropor to - circling back - the plastic carton stuff.

[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 11 points 10 hours ago

Plastic is generally cheaper; for a while there was a misguided push against using paper/cardboard because sAvE tHe TrEeS

[–] GrumpyDuckling@sh.itjust.works 5 points 11 hours ago

The plastic industry is why.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Plastic also has the benefit that it's really easy to make in whatever shape with injection molding, and is totally permanent, which if you don't care about disposal is great.

Meanwhile, making stuff out of a sheet of paper is a manufacturing challenge that has resulted in creative solutions like corrugation, and the container might seep through or soften or something.

There's a thing called extended producer responsibility which basically is the idea of making disposal not free anymore for the manufacturer.

[–] bearboiblake@pawb.social 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

permenent? can't plastic get melted down and recycled again?

once i put some plastic container in the dishwasher and it got too hot, it kind of melted a bit. it didn't totally melt but the lid doesn't fit anymore.

i dunno if it was injection molded though

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Not very well. Those long molecules break down into shorter segments every time they're recycled, which makes for an inferior and eventually useless product. Some plastics are also thermoset and can't ever be melted again, and some are just hard to recycle for other reasons and get picked out and landfilled. The whole idea of plastics recycling is basically greenwashing on a massive scale; the industry put a lot of money into promoting it to avoid scrutiny.

That being said, they're also permanent in the good way. Plastics don't biodegrade or erode. If you bury a plastic pipe in the ground, it may well still be there and intact in a million years. Anything natural will rot long before that, common metals will corrode, and concrete usually has metal rebar inside that pulls it apart as it corrodes. Plastic is also lightweight, which ceramics (stone-like materials) and metals are not, while still being strong under tension like metals.

Sunlight does slowly break down many plastics, but only into ever-smaller particles, which is where the microplastics in OP come from.

[–] bearboiblake@pawb.social 2 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

oh wow, i didn't realize that, i thought it was infinitely reusable just by melting and re-forming it. thank you really much for the explanation.

what you wrote reminded me of silly putty, it's really stretchy and elastic to start with, but if you play with it for a while, it starts to be less elastic and breaks apart.

does metal also break down? i'm thinking about like aluminium cans that are used for soda and stuff like that

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (2 children)

Nope, metals are elements as opposed to molecule compounds and literally can be melted and cast forever. They say most of the gold ever mined is still in use today, so your modern ring might have bits of a ring melted down in ancient Egypt in it. Glass is like this too. Paper is more like plastic, albeit somewhat biodegradable when it eventually has to be thrown out.

In practice, there's still a limit for many metals because they will get contaminated. Copper building up in scrap steel is a problem IIRC. It's not a big issue with aluminum, though, unless you're doing something like building an airplane where you need super high purity. Cans are almost all recycled into more cans.

There are ways to purify a metal melt, but they can be expensive and usually produce waste slag. I've never heard of glass being purified; it's probably too cheap to not just make more of, since it's derived from really common minerals.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 hours ago

My cast iron pan was made from recycled iron. And if I bought it a month later it would be in the batch that has a product recall because they also recycled some lead in it

[–] bearboiblake@pawb.social 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

thank you for the explanation, it was really interesting and in-depth! you should be a teacher!

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks! I'm not sure I have the same presence IRL, haha.

[–] bearboiblake@pawb.social 2 points 8 hours ago

ah don't worry about that, lots of it is online now :3

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago

A lot of metals are fairly easy to recycle. For others, being alloys (basically a mix of various metals in varying quantities), it's more tricky as you can't always really get a pure product out of recycling very easily, so it limits the types of things you can do with them. But all in all it's way better than with plastics.

[–] Gloomy@mander.xyz 10 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (7 children)

Was this writen by AI?

The researchers found surprisingly high levels of microplastics in the brain tissue. The concentration of plastics in the brain was much greater than that found in the liver or kidney samples. It was also higher than levels previously reported in placentas and testes. The median amount of total plastics for 2024 brain samples was 4917 micrograms per gram, and for 2016 samples, it was 3345 micrograms per gram. For comparison, the 2024 liver and kidney samples were 433 and 404 micrograms per gram, respectively.

Even more concerning was the finding that the amount of plastic in the brain was increasing over time. Brain tissue samples from 2024 had significantly higher levels of microplastics than samples from 2016, representing an approximate 50% increase in just eight years.

Isn't that the same information just repeated after each other?

To measure the microplastics, the researchers first chemically dissolved the tissue. This created a liquid mixture. They then spun this mixture at very high speeds in a machine called a centrifuge. This process separated out any undissolved materials, including plastics, into a small pellet. Next, they heated this pellet to a very high temperature (600 degrees Celsius), a process that breaks down the plastic.

Why does this sound like somebody explaining this to a 10 year old?

[–] Blumpkinhead@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

I don't know if you've heard, but our brains are apparently full of plastic. We need articles like this dumbed down for us.

[–] merdaverse@lemmy.world 5 points 10 hours ago

Yes, it is. Probably a few phrases written by a human and then a summary of the article with AI.

https://gptzero.me/

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›