The average bottle of water contains nearly 250,000 pieces of “nanoplastic”, a new study has found. Nanoplastics are plastic particles so small that they can disrupt the machinery of human cells.
of The findings were announced on Monday. A paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) opens a disturbing window into a largely uncharted corner of plastic pollution: an area marked by plastics roughly the size of virus and vaccine particles.
“We know that microplastics have always been present in the environment,” co-author Beijan Yang of Columbia University told The Hill. “they are Located high up in the mountainsand below mariana trenchand quite a lot Underwater in New York City In the same way. ”
But microplastics are relatively large and easy to measure, he said. Microplastics can be measured in millionths of a meter and can be observed using techniques such as scanning electron microscopy.
The research team was concerned about nanoplastics. Nanoplastics are particles thousands of times smaller and can be measured in billionths of a meter. The smaller these particles are, Yang says, the more dangerous they can be. “The smaller the particle size, the easier it is to enter the human body and pass through various barriers.”
Yang added that this small compound “passes through the blood and then crosses various barriers to enter cells, where they can interfere with organelles (cell organelles) and cause them to malfunction.” .
Both microplastics and nanoplastics have been found to have the following characteristics: various dangerous effects A December article in The Lancet reveals research into a surprising array of major systems in the human body.
A review of recent research shows that small plastics can interfere with the human body’s chemistry, affecting and influencing the microbial communities in the gut that help digest food. It turns out.
Microplastics and nanoplastics can cause “oxidative stress, inflammation, immune dysfunction, changes in biochemical and energy metabolism, impaired cell proliferation, disruption of microbial metabolic pathways, abnormal organ development, and carcinogenicity.” The authors of The Lancet wrote:
So if these potentially dangerous compounds are in your bottled water, is it safe to drink?
Knowing about the potential risks of nanoplastics is only half the puzzle. Scientists also need to know what kind of plastic polymers people are actually ingesting and how much of it to determine how dangerous the exposure is.
That’s where PNAS research comes into play. Using an innovative new laser imaging method, scientists were able to identify plastics of much smaller size than previously possible, including some plastics of potential concern.
By passing three common brands of water through extremely fine-grained filters, they were able to capture and identify particles that could be measured on a scale of billionths of a meter.
But these plastics made up just 10 percent of all the nanoparticles the scientists found. They also found unidentified tiny pieces of clay, metal, and black carbon debris from the fire, as well as plastic that had deteriorated beyond the ability of imaging techniques to detect it.
The mere presence of an object of this size can destroy the body. Because even though they are chemically inert, they are large enough to enter and destroy cells, like sand in an engine.
But scientists say the chemical structure of plastics is of particular concern.
Because plastics are so similar to the chemistry of living things, petrochemicals are, after all, made from the ancient residues of living things that died long ago, and because they are chemical messengers that facilitate the work of a wide range of living organisms. By mimicking structure, important biological functions can be mimicked or disrupted. of bodily functions.
Scientists found a variety of plastics inside the bottles, but five types dominated, including polyethylene terephthalate (PET).
This finding wasn’t too surprising since PET makes up the structure of the bottle itself. Additionally, although PET compounds may contain antimony, a toxic catalyst, this raised little concern as PET is generally considered safe.
However, the water inside the bottles was also found to contain a wide range of potentially dangerous nanoplastics not contained in the bottles themselves, suggesting an unknown source of environmental contamination.
Scientists have identified compounds such as nylon that break down into toxic monomers when broken down. Polystyrene (or Styrofoam, commonly used in foam containers) can break down into styrene, a suspected carcinogen. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) can contain harmful additives such as lead and phthalates, which have been linked to disruption of the nervous and endocrine systems.
In what researchers are calling an ironic discovery, plastic compounds that match the main material in reverse osmosis filters were also found in water. This suggests that the plastic was leached into the water by the filtration process itself, said co-author Naixin Qian. Columbia University told The Hill.
But Qian said more dangerous particles, such as PVC and polystyrene, likely entered the bottles along with the “raw water” that filled them.
One possibility as to how they got into that water: a plastics factory, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Releases aerosolized plastic gas It can enter the environment, into the air and therefore into rain and water.
But regardless of the source of nanoplastics, the Colombian team was particularly concerned about the health risks they pose, especially to the very young and the very old.
These particles are small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier and can cause neurodegeneration, especially in older people, where the barrier is “loose,” Yang said.
Exposure to microplastics and nanoplastics can cause the following symptoms: Cell damage in the nervous systemNanoplastics are more harmful than microplastics, leading to an increased risk of neurological disorders and behavioral changes.
Nanoplastics are also small enough to cross the placenta and enter the generally protected environment of the uterus, so their effects on the developing fetus are unknown.
For example, nanoplastics can get inside the umbilical vein, which draws blood and waste products back from the fetus. Interfering with cellular processes Helps dispose of cell debris. They are also serious damage fetal kidneys and germ cells, and even inhibit normal growth About the fetal heart.
The developing fetal nervous system very sensitive Reduces damage caused by environmental pollutants, nanoplastics can harm cells in fetal brain tissue stay alive.
Given that these plastics enter the body through drinking water, the digestive system may be most directly affected. Scientists have found that PET interferes with symptoms such as: Major microbial communities promotes the growth of harmful bacteria in the human intestine while suppressing what is beneficial.
Research using mice has shown that microplastics and nanoplastics leads to cell death the inner wall of the intestines increases inflammation in the intestines.
If nanoplastics can enter the bloodstream from the digestive system, the effects could be even more widespread, including heart disease.
There is strong evidence that this can happen. A 2021 study found that when rats were given water embedded with polystyrene or Styrofoam nanoparticles, those particles began to accumulate in their hearts — The heart swells with collagen, making it difficult to beat and ultimately leading to premature death of heart cells.
And in petri dish tests, nanoparticles May destroy human red blood cellsHowever, we were unable to reproduce these findings in real blood.
However, these experimental results are troubling, as the risks of nanoplastics remain speculative at this point. Such particles can be highly toxic to cells at high doses, but what happens at the levels to which the general public is actually exposed is much less clear.
This gap in our knowledge stems from a technology gap. Because there is no reliable way to identify nanoparticles in the environment, scientists could not accurately calculate the number of particles to expose cells to in order to test the effects of exposure.
The Columbia findings take an important step toward closing that gap.
So perhaps more important than the discovery itself was how the Columbia University team made it. A new method that scientists say can identify specific nanoplastics in soil, air and human tissue.
The method is called “Raman scattering,” and it was co-developed by study co-author Wei Ming, who shines a laser beam on an unknown plastic particle and deciphers the frequency of the reflected light. It tells you what the plastic polymer is inside.
Compounds such as PVC, PET and polystyrene are all “made up of different chemical bonds,” Min says. “Those different chemical bonds have different inherently specific energies. And we can use a laser to examine that energy and detect the interaction between the laser and that part of the chemical bond. Masu.”
This allows researchers to “distinguish between different chemical bonds and therefore different types of polymers,” Min added.
But Qian cautioned that the research team still does not have enough information, for example, how the levels of nanoplastics in the bottles compare to levels in tap water across the country.
Yang’s previous research suggests that levels of nanoplastics in New York City tap water are significantly lower than levels of nanoplastics in bottled water; A very special find from a special city. (The research team plans to begin publishing results on tap water supplies across the country within the next two years.)
Qian said the baton has now been passed to toxicologists to determine how the levels the research team detected in bottled water translate into actual health effects.
“We just took the first step of quantifying the exposure. [nanoplastics] It’s in the water bottle we have [are] In fact, we are exposed every day,” Qian said.
“Once we have accurate exposures, we can actually do more research on the toxic effects,” she says.
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