3mo ago

Human brain samples contain an entire spoon’s worth of nanoplastics, study says

www.cnn.com /2025/02/03/health/plastics-inside-human-brain-wellness/index.html

“The concentrations we saw in the brain tissue of normal individuals, who had an average age of around 45 or 50 years old, were 4,800 micrograms per gram, or 0.48% by weight,” Campen said.

That’s the equivalent of an entire standard plastic spoon, Campen said.

“Compared to autopsy brain samples from 2016, that’s about 50% higher”

An entire spoon's worth of plastic in ol' wrinkly. That doesn't seem good.

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3mo ago

Human brain samples contain an entire spoon’s worth of nanoplastics, study says

www.cnn.com /2025/02/03/health/plastics-inside-human-brain-wellness/index.html

A Boring Dystopia @lemmy.world

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3mo ago

Human brain samples contain an entire spoon’s worth of nanoplastics, study says

www.cnn.com /2025/02/03/health/plastics-inside-human-brain-wellness/index.html

News @lemmy.world

return2ozma @lemmy.world

3mo ago

Human brain samples contain an entire spoon’s worth of nanoplastics, study says

www.cnn.com /2025/02/03/health/plastics-inside-human-brain-wellness/index.html

79 comments

As far as we know the plastic is mostly not doing anything and is possibly bioinert (thatd be lucky). We don't have anybody to compare it to though, because everybody on earth including the uncontacted tribes has a ton of plastic in em cause microplastics are in every environment including just the rain and every plant and every animal. Would I say it's good to have the equivalent of a plastic spoon in your brain? No, I'd rather not have it there and I'd rather us stop polluting the environment with more microplastics.
I do feel like we lost this struggle, like long term. It's going to be thousands of years before this stuff starts to break down. We can, hopefully, make it not as bad I guess
- Yeah, the silver lining here is that the reason we use plastic for everything (well, the reason beyond "oil stonks go brrrr") is that it doesn't really react to much of anything and is about as inert as a substance can be. And as terrible as it sounds, if there was any massively noticeable interaction between microplastics and our nervous system/bloodstream/neurons/cellular activity/etc we'd probably be dropping dead by the thousands everyday already, barring any future realization that this stuff fucks with our brains like lead exposure.
  
  barring any future realization that this stuff fucks with our brains like lead exposure.
  :yea:

“Compared to autopsy brain samples from 2016, that’s about 50% higher”
Uh, doesn't that mean that we're also getting more plastic, faster? I think we might be cooked yall
- That's like 6.5% per year, compounded. I may have a plastic spoon in my brain, but that's a better return than most HYSAs.
- It seems that way to me. Also:
  More than half of all plastic ever made has been made since 2002 and production is on track to double by 2040
  We are also making more plastic, at a faster rate
  
  I think part of the problem is that we're putting plastic into the environment and that's going into the fruit, into the veg, and into the animals, and those are going into us.
  No matter how much we reduce plastic around our food we're still ingesting plastic polluting the environment that the plants and animals are not avoiding. And more and more of that plastic is polluting that environment meaning more of it is inevitably going into us.
  The only way this is reversed is by reversing plastic in the environment.
- Even if we stop making plastic, there's already massive amounts in the environment.
  We're extremely doomed

deus ex machina deus ex machina deus ex machina

If I eat more plastic maybe I'll finally have enough spoons to get through the day

The plastic make me think real good.
- Plastic makes me feel good 👻
  
  🎶 A plastic man...sleepin in your bed. 🎶
  
  PLASTIC PLASTIC PLASTIC PLASTIC PLASTIC PLASTIC PLASTIC PLASTIC PLASTIC PLASTIC
  FEEL GOOD
  FEEL GOOD
  FEEL GOOD
  FEEL GOOD
  FEEL GOOD
  FEEL GOOD
  FEEL GOOD
  FEEL GOOD
  Feel Good.

- Of course we have one
  
  It was in your brain, you just forgot it was there.

Eating more than a spoonfull a day to make sure my brilliant brain is encased in enough plastic to preserve it for future generations

i was told life in plastic was supposed to be fantastic
- Life in plastic, it's fantastic. Plastic in life, it's... blithe?
  I am not good at this, I have a spoon in my brain.
  
  there is no spoon
  so the plastic tells me

Well you see little Timmy, there's good neuroplasticity, and ... bad neuroplasticity.
Timmy no! Put the crayon down! You're gonna end up in the Marines!

I wouldn't have spent my childhood chewing on pen caps if I had known that my food already had my recommended daily intake of plastic.

Rotating a plastic spoon in my mind

30 times more plastic than 8 years ago is fucking crazy
- You're reading it wrong, the 7-30 times figure is comparing how much plastic was in the brain compared to the kidneys and liver. Its 50% more plastic then 8 years ago.

love how it ends with a bunch of personal responsibility bs for trying to limit your plastic intake, very cool
- I promise you and cannot stress it enough how much easier personal responsibility is in a more sane society. If I can walk 2 minutes to a convenience store, order an onigiri for $1.50 and take a train to a park in 5 minutes for $1 it's just a different reality. There's no suffering as you lose weight. You're not beating the odds and recreating your life from scratch by playing hopscotch around all the temptations. You're actually choosing between an unhealthy, hyperpalletable palletable option and a more modest option. It's like the difference between a tofu based vegan option and them just picking the sausage out of the pasta.
  If you could get your food in biodegradable casing instead of plastic with a button press you'd gladly press the button and never look back.
  
  Yep, that's the thing that gets me every time.
  One of the key principles of my job is to make it as easy as possible for people to do the "right" thing and as hard as possible to make bad choices. And I'm constantly applying that principle to my own workflows to outmaneuver my brain's busted reward centers so I can trick myself into doing laundry or whatever. So I'm often hyperaware of the structural inconveniences imposed on me and on all of us, and how it's a Sisyphean endeavor to try to do anything that runs counter to how society is structured. Impossible and maddening.
  
  If you could get your food in biodegradable casing instead of plastic with a button press you'd gladly press the button and never look back.
  No, you can take ma food, but you can never take. Ma. FREEDOOOOOOOM!
  (Never mind you guys, that's just the spoon talking!)
- publications love doing that shit lol. the whole concept of a carbon footprint was invented to make individual people feel personally responsible for climate change even though corporations pollute 100x more.
- Honestly, it's not like policy in any imperial core country ever listens to scientists, so what else are they supposed to say? Buy a gun?
  
  I'm calling on all media to start ending every article with a list of the names, addresses, and schedules of CEOs in an industry relevant to the story, followed by a suggestion to buy a gun and do something
  
  Yeah, obviously they're not going to publish the Names and Addresses bit, but they talk about how plastic production still increasing in the article, so even some milquetoast liberal "contact your representatives" or "boycott plastic companies" would be an improvement
- its your fault for listening to to much Pop Music.
  
  You're right

Don't care still voting for TRUMP

Presumably wet brains weigh.more than old preserved brain samples

First I was going to ask if it was a teaspoon or tablespoon, but it’s more akin to the measurement device as opposed to its measured substance.
Jfc.
- Yea, when I saw the headline I immediately thought it was a scoop of plastic too.

50% increase in 8 years is fascinating. I doubt we increased plastics production that much in that timeframe, so what caused the increase?
- Speculating: the breakdown of existing environmental plastics into smaller, more absorbable pollutants? existing plastics more thoroughly polluting the food/water supplies?
  
  I think that's true because the amount of plastic waste is being significantly lower. Of the plastic still being emitted into the environment, the majority is from tires. Tire dust.
  
  Yeah, the comment elsewhere about 50% of plastic having been produced since '02 has me convinced it's the former.
- Takes time to build up at every layer of water -> Agriculture -> body -> brain, probably.
- It happened slowly, then all at once.
- We totally increased plastic production that much
- I think it’s plastic erosion that matters more in this instance

You guys don't use brain spoon? I use brain spoon all the time!

Yum I love plastic

I knew I could feel all that shit sloshing around back in there

That's fine I wasn't using all doze winkles the uwu microplasties may as well settle in

the average person has 8 spoons in their brain
- False, statistical error. The average person has 1 spoon in their mind. Spoon georg who eat a bucket of lego a day and the bucket and has 8000 spoons in his mind was a statistical outlier and should not have been included

Considering how I have a bad habit of just chewing the shit out of plastic, I wouldnt be surprised if I had a ladle

Oh the media monkeys and the junket junkies will invite you to their plastic pantomime. Throw their invitations away!

The blood-brain barrier

I thought the headline meant the plastic could fill the bowl of a spoon, but no the fucking spoon itself is plastic

ok seriously how the fuck do we avoid cancer and shit from this
are we just fucked
- The article recommends reducing single use plastics, and especially trying to avoid plastic around food (using glass for leftovers, not heating up food with plastic wrap on it, etc). Diet is the main source for these plastics.
  We are still fucked though.
  
  give me some of that east german glass that doesn't break, otherwise i'll take the nanoplastics over having to clean up glass as often as i'd drop a container

Makes me think of a guy who used to eat starburst wrappers until his 20s

🎶 Just a spoons worth of ~~sugar~~ microplastics helps the cognition go down 🎶
"We've discovered ways to drastically increase plastic in the brain"
"You mean neuroplasticity, right"
- Oooohhhh!! That would have actually made so much more sense! Oopsie

Future generations will have their brains filled with perhaps spent nanobots or microscale 3D printer feedstock, just as our ancestors filled theirs with asbestos, lead, and mercury
- Personally, I'm hyped for the new and exotic antibiotic-resistance super-bugs and parasites colonizing their bodies.
- like in the neo-victorian times in Neil Diamond's book The Stephenson Age where poor people cough up soot made from trillions of dead nanobots
  
  You mean Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age
- Maybe I'm too optimistic but I hope we'll have nanobots to clean up all that crap before we stop functioning.

- "Breathe the pressure.
  Come play my game, I'll test ya"
- Some days, the spoon bends you

79 comments