Technology

Is this the kind of study like when they injected aspartame into rats' brains in huge quantities and they got sick? Because this kind of overexposure isn't useful. The dose makes the poison and exposing cells to overwhelming amounts of anything will kill them.

To test what these plastics do to our bodies once they’re consumed, the team bathed human embryonic kidney cells in the plastic roughage shed by the baby-food containers. (The team chose this kind of cell because kidneys have so much contact with ingested plastic.) After two days of exposure to concentrated microplastics and nanoplastics, about 75 percent of the kidney cells died

Bathed. Concentrated. Two words that prove this won't be anywhere near reality. We need studies on how this affects people with real-world conditions. Not artificial conditions that are so far from reality that the effects observed are meaningless.

Yes, more data is needed, yet the article itself is super alarmist imho. It waffles on about microplastics for several paragraphs, mentioning the way lower sounding count of nanoplastics only offhandedly, then suddenly does a grudging 180 and admits that microplastics aren't likely to be an issue, but nanoplastics might be bad.

The study the article conveniently defends is not really a good indicator. They overdosed the plastic they had the (isolated) cells in significantly, justifying that by "but buildup might occur" without a base for what amount of which buildup would be realistic and if the exposure they chose is close to that. This sort of vagueness usually points to an exaggerated experiment.

I have heard this sort of thing Just waaaay too often. I'm the end, this shit might be getting dangerous only on levels 99% of people never ever reach. It's the same as "testing in mice has shown..." Thing. That does only hint at possible implications, it doesn't tell you anything about reality. In the end, mice aren't human, isolated cells are not babies and however chosen concentrations of a substance in a petry dish aren't real life exposures.

I read the whole article and that particular test was the least alarming to me. Arricle sais the cells died 3x faster than when exposed to a more diluted solution, but the article doesn't mention references for what concentration levels were tested or if the levels were anywhere close to what a real human being could be exposed to. They just say the particles might accumulate over time, but that doesn't really mean anything without hard numbers.

I'm not saying their method is entirely inappropriate, but it does sounds like that argument that "coke is bad for your bones" supported by immersing chicken bones in coke.