Plastic chokes a canal in Chennai, India. Credit: R. Satish Babu/AFP via Getty
Topics: Applied Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Environment, Medicine
People who had tiny plastic particles lodged in a key blood vessel were more likely to experience heart attack, stroke or death during a three-year study.
Plastics are just about everywhere — food packaging, tyres, clothes, water pipes. And they shed microscopic particles that end up in the environment and can be ingested or inhaled by people.
Now, the first data of their kind show a link between these microplastics and human health. A study of more than 200 people undergoing surgery found that nearly 60% had microplastics or even smaller nanoplastics in a main artery1. Those who did were 4.5 times more likely to experience a heart attack, a stroke, or death in the approximately 34 months after the surgery than were those whose arteries were plastic-free.
“This is a landmark trial,” says Robert Brook, a physician-scientist at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, who studies the environmental effects on cardiovascular health and was not involved with the study. “This will be the launching pad for further studies across the world to corroborate, extend, and delve into the degree of the risk that micro- and nanoplastics pose.”
But Brook, other researchers and the authors themselves caution that this study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine on 6 March, does not show that the tiny pieces caused poor health. Other factors that the researchers did not study, such as socio-economic status, could be driving ill health rather than the plastics themselves, they say.
Landmark study links microplastics to serious health problems, Max Kozlov, Nature.
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