Your suspicions and concerns about possible harm to humans caused by microplastics may just have been proven correct.
A recent paper entitled, "A rapid review and meta-regression analyses of the toxicological impacts of microplastic exposure in human cells" looked at 17 previous studies on the toxicological impacts of microplastics on human cell lines.
The scientists analysed microplastics concentrations which caused damage to cells. This concentration was consistent with the levels consumed by people through contaminated water and seafood. It should be noted that microplastics can be taken up by plants and so avoiding using any diet seems to be virtually impossible.
The scientists found that microplastics can cause; cell death, allergic responses, and can damage cell walls. Do we really need more of a wake-up call then this?
If that wasn't scary enough it's worth noting that, "The research also showed irregularly shaped microplastics caused more cell death than spherical ones. This is important for future studies as many microplastics bought for use in laboratory experiments are spherical, and therefore may not be representative of the particles humans ingest." Source Guardian
It is time to put some political weight, financial weight and all of our collective power towards taking serious steps to deal with this massive and harmful plastic pollution crisis.
Gaia Guy has a few interesting solutions to help you go plastic-free, but it must go much further than any one company or even country can do.
We, the human race has to decide that this really matters and then do the right thing. We need to immediately phase these plastics out or invest in the technology to be deployed worldwide that can deal with them in a closed-loop system so we don't continue to increase the levels of microplastics in our world and in our bodies.
Any ideas you have to go plastic-free would be welcome so please leave your ideas below in the comments.
