BLOG: The hidden health danger of plastics
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Plastic is everywhere in our lives, and studies are emerging now that show how dangerous this may be.
Two common types of plastics, polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), are examined in a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Polyethylene is a versatile type of plastic used in films like grocery bags, food containers and packaging films. PVC is known for its use in plumbing but is also widely used in health care packaging, tubing, electronics and automotive interiors. The problem of these materials is that they never disappear once they are produced. They just break down into smaller and smaller pieces.
The smallest pieces, commonly known as micro-nano-plastics (MNPs), can be less than 1 µm in size. They accumulate inside of cells, enter breast milk, cross the placenta and circulate through our bloodstream. Exposure through aerosols, ingestion and even skin contact happens constantly, and they find their way into places we would not expect.
There is growing and justified concern that wherever MNPs end up, they contribute to disease. The recent study, performed by a group at the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli in Naples, Italy, examined 257 patients, ranging in age from 65 to 77 years, who were followed for about 3 years after undergoing a carotid endarterectomy, in which samples of the excised occlusive material were analyzed for MNPs. Significant levels of polyethylene were found in 58% of patients, and PVC was found in 12%. Patients whose atheromatous plaques included MNPs had a 4.5 times greater chance of going on to develop myocardial infarction, stroke or death in the 3 years of follow-up as compared with patients whose plaques showed no evidence of these materials.
This study alone does not prove that MNPs cause heart attack and stroke because other contributors may coexist with the MNPs, but this study is not alone in hinting that MNPs do cause disease from oxidative stress, inflammation and apoptosis in vascular cells.
It stands to reason that MNPs may play a role in other diseases, including in the eye. Do plastics contribute to retinal pigment epithelium dysfunction in age-related macular degeneration? How about a reduction in outflow capacitance in pseudoexfoliation glaucoma? We simply haven’t performed these studies yet. More challenging still is what to do about it. We sleep on bed sheets that came from a plastic laundry bin, sit on plastic furniture, and eat and drink from plastic containers. The worldwide burden of immortal plastic is immeasurable and growing. Certainly, we must understand this problem better with further study. I hope it’s not too late.
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