science

16076 readers

863 users here now

A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.

rule #1: be kind

<--- rules currently under construction, see current pinned post.

2024-11-11

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

105

Our brain contains alarmingly high levels of microplastics (www.techexplorist.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

What's the impact exactly?

They say microplastics are in every organism, everywhere. Seems like a large enough sample size that we should have an idea of what kind of damage they do?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago

Sample size isn't the problem. The problem is we don't have a control group to compare against. Ideally, you'd compare people with micro plastics to people without them, but those people don't really exist anymore.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

https://hsc.unm.edu/news/2025/02/hsc-newsroom-post-microplastics-human-brains.html

... brain tissue from people who had been diagnosed with dementia had up to 10 times as much plastic in their brains as everyone else, Campen said. But while there is a clear correlation, the study design cannot show whether higher levels of plastic in the brain caused the dementia symptoms – they may simply accumulate more due to the disease process itself, he said.