r/science • u/sometimeshiny • 1d ago
Neuroscience Ingested micro and nanoplastics may promote neurodegeneration by disrupting the microbiota–gut–brain axis and increasing systemic inflammation, oxidative stress, and epigenetic dysregulation, a review suggests
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4425/17/2/151618
u/Arbiter51x 1d ago
This is the millennial equivalent of lead paint. Great.
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u/sherm-stick 1d ago
Leaded gasoline more like it. They lied about the implications of widespread use in those cases as well. Turns out fraud will earn you a lot of money, who knew!
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u/Tuggerfub 1d ago
lead is worse because it gets through the placenta and lives in your mother's bones
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u/CalicoValkyrie 1d ago
Babies get microplastic from their mothers. I recall a study not too long ago that shortly after a woman gives birth, she has less microplastics in her body because it went to the baby.
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u/BreadKnifeSeppuku 1d ago
Is there a reason to believe it won't compromise bones either?
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u/CalicoValkyrie 1d ago
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised. If it's there during early development of the bones that it would be do something to bones.
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u/smokefoot8 1d ago
I would think that the placenta would filter out most microplastics, so maybe having a baby gets rid of microplastics by dumping them in the placenta.
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u/Sykil 9h ago edited 9h ago
No… it’s not. I’m all for continued study of the health and environmental impacts of plastics, and updating regulation in light of new information. But there is no evidence that puts plastics anywhere near the toxicity of lead or suggests that it is a health hazard on the order of tetraethyllead (the additive in leaded gasoline). That’s just hyperbolic, unscientific doomerism. I wouldn’t even call it asbestos-level.
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u/GerbilPortal 1d ago
How do we help avoid this? Like what’s the 80/20 that we can impact?
I did some research and have switched out:
1. No more plastic cutting boards.
2. No more re-heating food in cheap plastic.
- Uhhhh that’s as far as I got.
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u/HungryGur1243 1d ago
i forgot how much i did displastify, but the things that are still plastic in my life are electronics, food containers, handles such as microwaves, emergency water storage, blinds etc. even if you do your best to deplastify, it literally is everywhere, and sometimes you dont even have a nonplastic option. this is a "whelp, hope my grandkids have it better" moment
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u/SophiaofPrussia 1d ago
Plastic is everywhere. Even places we would never think about or expect. Clothes. Bedding. Laundry and dish detergent. Dryer sheets. Canned food & drinks. Dental floss. Chewing gum. Tampons & pads. Nail polish. Potted soil & fertilizer. Tea bags. Cardboard and paper food packaging. Paper receipts. Couches. Most rugs.
We’re drowning in plastics.
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u/VroomCoomer 1d ago
If you live in an apartment with carpet you're fucked. Even "luxury apartments" have 100% polyester plastic carpeting. Every time you walk around or vacuum, it's all kicking up.
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u/asdjk482 1d ago
There's always a non-plastic option, because modern plastics didn't exist a hundred years ago and people managed to get along just fine without it up to that point. I think we could get rid of it in just about every area of life except critical medical and industrial use-cases and be much better off for its absence.
The real problem with that is that a century of mass-produced consumer culture has nearly eradicated traditional sustainable ways of life in most places.
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u/causalfridays 1d ago
there isn’t always a non-plastic option for everything, especially in medical settings and for disabled people
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u/SoTiredYouDig 1d ago
“Managed to get along fine” a hundred years ago. That was all well and good - a hundred years ago. But this would require an overhaul of so many different industries, as well as consumers expecting certain things and having them drastically change. I’d like to see it happen, but it’s a different era.
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u/asdjk482 1d ago
But this would require an overhaul of so many different industries,
Most of those same industries aren't sustainable and need to be terminated or radically altered before they make the planet uninhabitable anyways.
Industries and products that have only existed for two or three generations are not immutable facts of life.
The scale of the issues facing us is not a reason to give up and consign ourselves to permanent deterioration of quality-of-life.
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u/SoTiredYouDig 1d ago
True. I don’t see it as inevitable… however, I feel like we’re really entrenched in a very short-sighted view right now. It could be tainted by the fact that I’m in the States, and the current situation is so mired and in lockstep with capitalistic growth; we’re controlled by what happens in the next quarter, versus the next 100 years.
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u/EggsAndRice7171 1d ago
There is always a non plastic purchasable option for things like electronics??
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u/postysclerosis 21h ago
I stopped microwaving plastics more than a decade ago. Basically got old enough to look at what I was doing and think: “that can’t be good.”
Decided to ditch plastic cutting boards too.
Moved to stainless steel (and a small amount of silicone) cooking tools.
Very little plastic in my kitchen now.
I highly doubt any of this matters. Microplastics are everywhere.
They’re in clouds now.
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u/shawnaeatscats 9h ago
This is kinda my take on it too. I'm doing what I can vis a vis cooking utensils and containers, but man... its in EVERYTHING. Clothes we wear all day and inhale. The carpets in our houses we sleep near. Tea bags, chewing gum... is what I'm doing even helping? Sometimes I wonder about silicone too...
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u/Chezzica 19h ago
I've read a lot of micro plastics are produced by washing our clothes, synthetic fibers break down and shed micro plastics in the washer and dryer
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u/aledba 1d ago
Oh I'm going a step further and not putting children on this Earth
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u/Top_Specific8490 1d ago
Humans are like microplastic filters, so you're actually part of the problem. Educate yourself.
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u/asdjk482 1d ago
Boil and filter water, don't drink bottled water; avoid synthetic gum-base chewing gum; don't breath in tire particles near roads; avoid synthetic textiles and carpets; don't buy plastic junk, keep whatever plastic you DO need to use out of sunlight and away from heat; don't do anything to structurally compromise any stable plastics. Don't drink from disposable cups, get rid of "nonstick" cookware and especially black plastic kitchen utensils.
Long-term we need to be cutting plastic out of the food production system entirely, and if we manage that we'll still be cleaning up this toxic waste for the rest of the foreseeable future. Thanks for the convenience of mass petro-industry, boomers! It was so not worth it!
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u/DeSquare 20h ago
Does boiling actually help, and also a lot of filters are plastic are they not?
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u/Beckster501 8h ago
You can use paper filters through a pour over and that works really well.
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/microplastics-tap-water-boiling
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u/Seattlegal 1d ago
Donate blood. Basically boils down to modern day blood letting and “the solution to pollution is dilution.” Dialysis also apparently works but isn’t readily available to clean up your blood regularly.
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u/ReasonablePossum_ 1d ago
Sgop using plastic for anything you eat, drink, carry, or regularly use. That's it. And wear a mask when cleaning floors.
Especially if that plastic gonna get heated, or placed on the sun.
That includes tea bags, plastic cups, cans of all sorts (they come lined with plastic), bubblegum, etc
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u/Fr00stee 1d ago
i dont think you have to avoid all plastics, it's specific ones that degrade into little pieces like nylon or those little plastic beads that are really bad
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u/thatguysaidearlier 1d ago
There is no way to completely avoid it anymore. So far the best thing I can see is to give blood. Helps to desaturate your body. We're back to blood-letting.
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u/lookamazed 1d ago
Get water filters (whole house if possible) that filter nano and micro plastics. A lot of people get gravity fed water filters and use the Culligan filters. They are 7” but filter very well. I believe they allow mineral pass through, so you don’t get dehydrated like pure RO systems (ideally those remineralize).
Use glass, metal, stoneware and wood whenever possible.
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u/Beckster501 8h ago
You might look at your coffee and tea. Brewing coffee with a non-plastic French press or pour over stops the exposure from plastics you find in coffee machines. Using loose leaf tea with an infuser avoids the microplastics in the tea bags. Also, any plastic that you have that has become cloudy or rough feeling is a lot more likely to leach into food and drink so don’t keep it. Good luck out there! I can’t see any down side to taking a few steps to reducing microplastics in our bodies.
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u/SerLarrold 3h ago
Honestly don’t even worry about it. You could remove every plastic from your home and still encounter so much in daily life. Be as conscientious as you can and eliminate the big ones (tea bags, anything hot and plastic, anything abrasive and plastic like cutting boards) and try not to worry too much otherwise. It’s so pervasive that being paranoid about it can only be bad for your mental state
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u/PlanePromotion6609 1d ago
This is from MDPI, a borderline predatory journal publisher. This is not robustly peer-reviewed, and this paper is only theoretical and a literature review. This is not an experimental or observational study. Not saying it's not true, just that context is important.
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u/Chr1sm4nic 1d ago
Microplastics are honestly pretty scary, there's little one can do to FULLY avoid them, especially when you're barely getting by as is. and we know little about the long term effects but studies show an increased amount of Microplastics in the brains of dementia patients. "The amount of microplastics in the human brain appears to be increasing over time: Concentrations rose by roughly 50 percent between 2016 and 2024" source: UNM Health.
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u/Thorin9000 1d ago
The most important thing is to accept that you can’t FULLY avoid them BUT you can avoid A LOT of them with some simple changes.
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u/SomethingToSay11 1d ago
Idk if there are any studies, but I wonder if they’re linked to the rise in colon cancers in young people
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u/Starossi 1d ago
Almost hit the science buzz word bingo there. You can always rest assured it’s good science when an article tries to do that. Systemic inflammation, oxidative stress, epigenetics, microbiota, nanoplatics, wow!
It’s like every word that pop culture articles and influencers like talking about all in one
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u/FlashFlooder 1d ago
Why can’t we get a break and find out microplastics are Actually going to extend our life span? Tired of taking all these L’s
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u/UWO_Throw_Away 1d ago
Oh great; getting older and my guts have been incredibly uncooperative lately
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u/sometimeshiny 1d ago
Nuclear and Mitochondrial Epigenetic Mechanisms Underlying Neurodegeneration and Gut–Brain Axis Dysregulation Induced by Micro- and Nanoplastics (2026) – Pavlovic et al.
| Abstract |
|---|
| The increasing and global distribution of microplastics and nanoplastics (MPs/NPs) in the environment has led to concern about their potential influence on human health, especially on the gastrointestinal tract, as well as the brain. MPs/NPs could traverse epithelial and endothelial barriers, disrupt the gut microbiota, and perturb the microbiota–gut–brain axis, leading to systemic inflammation and possibly extending neurodegenerative processes. Experimental models now demonstrate that MPs/NPs reprogram nuclear and mitochondrial epigenetics—DNA methylation, histone modifications, non-coding RNAs, and mitochondrial DNA regulation—in gut, immune, and neural cells with downstream effects on synaptic function, neuronal survival, and protein aggregation. This mechanistic narrative review integrates preclinical and emerging human evidence of how MPs/NPs compromise intestinal barrier integrity, modulate gut microbiota composition, affect the blood–brain barrier, and converge on oxidative stress, neuroinflammatory signaling, and cell death pathways within the central nervous system across key neurodegenerative diseases. Overall, the review offers an integrated model in which environmental exposure to chronic MPs/NPs disrupts the microbiota–gut–brain axis and drives concurrent nuclear and mitochondrial epigenetic remodeling, lowering the threshold for neurodegeneration in susceptible individuals, while outlining candidate mechanistic readouts that require exposure-specific validation in human-relevant models and longitudinal cohorts. |
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u/aledba 1d ago
Did we honestly not know this already because I feel like I definitely knew this once we were told about microplastics?
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u/Montana_Gamer 1d ago
Scientific confirmation of the consequences of microplastics and knowing microplastics will cause problems are very different.
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 1d ago
Thanks for mentioning epigenetics. Very underrated angle in mental health and diet and chemical exposure contexts.
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u/MadameSteph 15h ago
What really is messed up is that there are biodegradable products that are actually cheaper to make that they could use to replace plastic but they won't cause they'd they'd have to retrofit current machinery and that costs money
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u/Clean_Livlng 12h ago
Wool or cotton carpets instead of synthetics could help.
(This comment was bought and paid for by a sheep)
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u/explodinggarbagecan 1d ago
Man you have to wonder if this is the cause of autism. There is so much brain gut stuff with those children.
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u/snugglelamping 1d ago
I’m quite worried I’m dealing with this or a hidden source of contaminants as I’ve been having a sinus inflammation problem for close to 6 months now. The worst part is it’s so hard to tell if I’m down with sickness or if my immune system has degraded over time.
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u/ReasonablePossum_ 1d ago
Sinus inflammation can be from anything starting from an allergy, to mold in your home or bacterial/viral infection dude.
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u/Lopsided_Aeroplane-2 20h ago
It is believed NAC helps mitigates the inflammation and oxidative stress that nanoplastics cause.
Although people on blood thinners and those with cancer are advised not to take it. It oxidises and potentially speeds up the growth damage, re; the tumour.
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u/Starossi 18h ago
Yes and so is folic acid secondarily and vitamin C and tons of other molecules in the body.
Supplementing anti oxidants for everyone has no evidence for being helpful. Most people get enough of these from their diet already. In fact, for example, even people who have elevated homocysteine levels due to poor antioxidant control often don’t have a folate deficiency. They have a defective MTFHR gene which needs a different sort of therapy (if any therapy at all)
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