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At the 2018 annual meeting of the European Society of Gastroenterology, Dr. Philipp Schwabl of the University of Vienna unveiled his latest findings: they found microplastics in human stool samples.
The study selected eight volunteers from European and Asian countries who reported in detail on their one-week diet. Two volunteers chewed gum wrapped in plastic every day, and many ingested fish or other seafood, with the vast majority drinking bottled drinking water. All in all, no one can escape the encirclement of plastic.
In 2019, a study published online in Annals of Internal Medicine showed that microplastics were detected in stool samples from healthy volunteers. The researchers found that all stool samples tested positive for microplastics. For every 10 grams of human feces, there are an average of 20 microplastic particles. A total of nine plastics were detected, with polypropylene and polyethylene terephthalate having the highest content.
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This study shows that plastic eventually reaches the human gastrointestinal tract. This may not be good news for us. Even more worrying is the ubiquity of microplastics.
Previously, in a pilot study published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, researchers from Nankai University's School of Environmental Science and Engineering and New York University School of Medicine in the United States made a surprising discovery: Even newborns and babies were not spared. They found that there was a higher concentration of microplastics in the baby's internal organs compared to adults living in the same area.
In December 2021, academic studies, also published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, showed that patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, had more microplastics in their stools than healthy controls, suggesting that these microplastics may be associated with the course of disease development.
The research team took stool samples from 50 healthy people and 52 patients with IBD from different regions. The results of the analysis showed that the feces of patients with IBD contained 1.5 times more microplastic particles than the stool of healthy subjects. The higher the amount of microplastics in the patient's body, the more pronounced the symptoms of disease-related diarrhea, rectal bleeding, and abdominal cramps.
The specific results are:
The concentration of microplastics in the feces of patients with IBD and healthy people was 41.8 and 28.0/g dm, respectively, and the microplastic particles per gram in the feces of patients with IBD were about 1.5 times more than those in healthy people.
A total of 15 microplastics were detected in the study, mainly polyethyl terephthalate (PET; for bottles and food containers) and polyamide (PA; for food packaging and textiles), the main forms of which are flakes and fibrous, respectively.
Through questionnaires, the researchers found that patients who drank bottled water, ate takeaway food, and were often exposed to dust contained more microplastics in their stools.
The study showed for the first time that the concentration of microplastics (MPs) in the stool of patients with IBD differed significantly from those in healthy people, and that the level of microplastics in the feces of patients with IBD was significantly higher than in healthy people.
We have reason to believe that we have unknowingly eaten a considerable amount of microplastics. Based on the American diet, Professor Kieran D. Cox and his team in Canada estimate that each person will eat 50,000 microplastic particles per year based on the type of food consumed and the amount of microplastics contained in different types of food, and if you count the microplastics floating in the air and inhaled by breath, the number of microplastic particles eaten per person per year is between 74,000 and 121,000. According to weight, each person eats about 5g of microplastics per week, which is equivalent to the weight of a bank card.
Image source: Photo.com
Due to the discharge of a large amount of plastic waste, the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea has almost become a "plastic product", in order to avoid our internal organs also become "plastic products", we should be more vigilant and reduce the use of plastic products. Whether "microplastics" pose a significant risk to human health is still hugely unknown, and more academic research is urgently needed to deal with its unknown risks.
bibliography:
1.https://eos.org/articles/microplastics-found-in-human-stool
2.APhilipp Schwabl et al. Detection of Various Microplastics in Human Stool：A Prospective Case Series.Annals of Internal Medicine.DOI：10.7326/M19-0618
3.Danopoulos E , Jenner L C , Twiddy M , et al. Microplastic Contamination of Seafood Intended for Human Consumption:A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis[J]. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2020, 128(12).
4.Yan, Zehua, Yafei Liu, Ting Zhang, Faming Zhang, Hongqiang Ren, and Yan Zhang. "Analysis of Microplastics in Human Feces Reveals a Correlation between Fecal Microplastics and Inflammatory Bowel Disease Status." Environmental Science & Technology Letters(2021). (DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.1c03924)
5.Cox K D, Covernton G A, Davies H L, et al. Human consumption of microplastics[J]. Environmental science & technology, 2019, 53(12): 7068-7074.
6.https://d2ouvy59p0dg6k.cloudfront.net/downloads/plastic_ingestion_web_spreads.pdf