Microplastics Have Been Spotted In Human Lungs — What Comes Next?
Just because they are called “micro” plastics does not mean they aren’t causing “macro”-sized problems.
Background
This week has been depressing in terms of environmental news. First, a study announces that 99% of people on this Earth inhale and exhale polluted air regularly! Next, another study reports the first case of living humans testing positive for something in their lungs. Not for a virus, but for microplastics — only they are the first known individuals to have them embedded inside their major respiratory organs.
One can merely wonder what comes next. Note: much of what will be said is not evidence-based. To some or many people who might read this, that is off-putting. To me, it is a chance to exercise my voice and relieve some bottled-up concerns about plastic bottles and the like.
Heart of the Matter
- Should the trend continue, doctors may even begin to recommend that patients get routine screening for plastics inside of the human body! This would apply to anyone who eats seafood such as fish and anyone who uses plastic utensils, plastic containers, plastic water bottles, etc. As to the former category, our bendable rubbish has been infiltrating aquatic habitats for quite some time. Enough for Earth to be submerged in consumer waste if time is not taken to fix it on a massive, globally coordinated scale. Those habitats carry fish, lobsters, and crabs, among other marine life who ingest the plastic bags or bottles. Yes, a routine screening similar to the ones for certain cancers and genetic or non-genetic diseases.
- Since the human digestive system reportedly has plastic swirling around in each bowel tract and our excrements reportedly have plastic in them, there may be a concern that people with pre-existing conditions might suffer more quickly. Take the lung issue, for instance. Is microplastic presence in such vital organs for breathing any benefit to COPD sufferers, lung cancer patients, asthmatics, individuals who have cystic fibrosis, or another malady? Imagine what could happen to people who have bowel troubles such as Crohn’s disease, IBD (inflammatory bowel disease), Celiac disease, or something different.
- How might someone’s mental health be impacted if they have to regularly conceive of the possibility that they have ingested something unhealthy and unnatural? People prone to anxiety, panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, or another form of mental suffering may rightfully feel they’re confronting a danger to their health and their very lives yet feel they cannot do much or seek to try every internet-promoted “remedy” to detox the body of plastics. Even dangerous ones. Imagine if hypochondria rates were to mirror the rates of environmental crises at present.
- Speaking of taking action, Public Service Announcements have long existed as ways to warn the public about lingering threats of their era before contemporary modern history and after it: from nuclear fallout/nuclear war fears in the 1950s-60s to responsible and safe Internet use in the 2000s-today, to surviving a pandemic in the early 2020s. Now, the rate of social media PSAs (e.g. YouTube) or television PSAs related to accidental human ingestion of plastic could grow in the coming years as humanity comes to better understand the reaping of what human activities have sown.
- If lungs host microplastics, then isn’t there a disturbing chance that microplastics could be discovered in other essential organs like the heart, kidneys, spleen, bladder, or liver more frequently? What would we do then? Yes, the liver is a natural self-detoxifier, but what if a person who owns that liver is, on average, consuming/ingesting more plastic than their liver can detox? As a matter of fact, after doing some browsing, one can spot that there are autopsy reports that microplastics had indeed circulated to the kidneys, floated in the bloodstream, and entered the spleen of human corpses.
- Microplastics could impact political dynamics, as in who wins or loses elections, and social dynamics beyond politics. Essentially, microplastics could become the subject of more extensive research in the future. Moreover, if they were observed to harm reproductive health, the elderly, laborers, and people who work in jobs vulnerable to microplastic exposure, then that could have a broad impact. Those people affected are, after all, constituents because the majority are over the voting age. Should a politician have a notable anti-climate or environmental action stance or make profits from polluters’ companies or some other unfair gain, that could have ramifications for them if there are more persuasive candidates who encourage climate/ecological reforms. Even if this is not the case, as has been with numerous climate/eco-apathetic political figures, microplastics could launch into several arenas of discourse amongst public health professionals, human rights activists, labor unions, parents, or even people on broad corporate ladder spectrums (e.g. plastic manufacturers).
It’s Urgent!
Please, if you have the money and ability, purchase metal, ceramic, or glass items that are not just the dishes you eat off or the utensils that pluck a meal bite from them but anything you use and touch regularly. For complicated items like disinfectants that may not readily come in glass, there are natural, plant-based versions one can make at home (remember to always apply safety measures, still). And, yes, there is microplastic air penetration that lies out of most people’s control, but even tinctures of plastic matter that don’t gain access to us could be significant in the effort for public health.
While I glance at the household kitchen as I’m typing, I see plastic dish soap, plastic food containers, plastic water jugs, a plastic baking mixing bowl, plastic food container lids, a plastic pharmaceutical cough syrup bottle, a plastic disinfectant spray bottle, a plastic bag that ties up packaged cereal, and a baggy plastic covering the food processor. If I were to get up and open the fridge or the kitchen cabinets as of this moment, it’d be even worse. I let my eyes run to my current workspace, where I’m seated, and I see a plastic Easter egg a few inches from me, plastic lip balm Vaseline containers — hopefully, the point is conveyed.
As soon as I have the means to move out and start house-hunting sometime during college, I’ll scour ways to toss over 50% of plastic out of my life. Irrespective of my budget and irrespective of plastic’s “convenience”, I will do it. After all, plastic is only a short-term convenience, a veneer for a long-term inconvenience in store for planet life and the planet itself unless the current trajectory shifts. I’ve already started to take minor steps now and will not stop.
As I plan to wash my hair this weekend, I shudder imagining touching that unreliable, glossy shampoo bottle and squirting its plastic-contaminated contents onto my living locks— that bottle, too, is plastic.
Each numbered item previously could garner intense debate and discussion, but one fact remains: I am not plastic. You are not plastic. No human being is plastic, and none of us deserve to have plastic nanoparticles constantly fed to our precious tissues and beautiful wonders that make the human body. Nor do the various marine and non-marine life deserve to be fed our cheap trappers of misery because animals are not plastic either.
