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Prospective parents, nursing mothers urged to mitigate use of plastics to protect their babies Microplastics - where do they come from? Microplastics are small particles of plastic, less than 5 mm (0.2 inch) in length, from the size of a grain of rice to particles that have to be viewed under a microscope, explain Yale Sustainability experts Leigh Shemitz and Paul Anastas. Primary microplastics are the microbeads found in personal care products, plastic pellets (or nurdles) used in industrial manufacturing, and plastic fibres used in synthetic textiles (e.g., nylon). Secondary microplastics are large plastic materials that . . . get...

Microplastics! They're in everything, from our bodies to the ocean. And apparently they're even found in sediment layers that date back as early as the first half of the 1700s, showing microplastics' pernicious ability to infiltrate even environments untouched by modern humans. A team of European researchers made this alarming discovery after studying the sediment layers at three lakes in Latvia, as detailed in a study published in the journal Science Advances. Scientists have long used layers of ash or ice to study past events on Earth, leading to the question of whether microplastics can serve as a reliable chronological...

Of 85 products tested, a popular organic pasta product had the highest levels These chemicals have been linked to cancer and other serious health conditions READ MORE: Average water bottle contains 240k pieces of nanoplastics 'Forever chemicals' linked to cancer are found in virtually every food product sold in American stores, a shocking report suggests. The watchdog Consumer Reports tested 85 everyday items for the presence of phthalates and bisphenols, two types of PFAS chemicals used to make plastics. The researchers tried to make their sample size as broad as possible - testing water, soda, cereal, bread, meat, fish, condiments,...

A new study has found that the overwhelming majority of protein foods such as meat and fish are contaminated with microplastics. The comprehensive study, conducted by researchers at the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy, found that approximately 88% of protein samples tested contained microplastic particles. "Highly processed products contained the most microplastics per gram," the study said in its findings.

New research finds that nearly 90% of proteins — yes, even vegan alternatives — tested by researchers contain microplastics, which have been linked to negative health consequences. Sixteen types of protein sources — including chicken, beef, seafood, pork, tofu and three plant-based alternatives — were analyzed for microplastics in a study published Monday in the journal Environmental Pollution. The samples were purchased in April 2022 from two supermarkets and one grocer in the Portland, Oregon, area — according to the product packaging, they were produced in the US. The researchers, from Ocean Conservancy and the University of Toronto, found that...

Washington (AFP) – Bottled water is up to a hundred times worse than previously thought when it comes to the number of tiny plastic bits it contains, a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said Monday. Using a recently invented technique, scientists counted on average 240,000 detectable fragments of plastic per liter of water in popular brands -- between 10-100 times higher than prior estimates -- raising potential health concerns that require further study. "If people are concerned about nanoplastics in bottled water, it's reasonable to consider alternatives like tap water," Beizhan Yan, an associate...

A young award-winning County Cork inventor says the only way climate change can be tackled is if more people are inspired through education to care about the environment and are encouraged to come up with creative solutions. A Google Global Grand Prize winner and more recently a recipient of a European Inventors Award, Fionn Ferreira, a chemistry masters student from Ballydehob in west Cork, recently patented his novel method of removing microplastic particles from water. According to the United Nations, there are more than 51 trillion microplastic particles in the seas, 500 times more than the number of stars in...

SHAREShare Article via FacebookShare Article via TwitterShare Article via LinkedInShare Article via Email This 39-year-old makes $160K/month in passive income—a look at his typical day:... Harvard nutritionist shares No. 1 vitamin that keeps her brain ’young and... This 52-year-old early retiree left the U.S. for Portugal with his family—and... LIFE What’s in your drinking water? If you live in one of these states, it might soon be recycled sewage Published Fri, Aug 19 202212:12 PM EDT Annika Kim Constantino@ANNIKAKIMC SHAREShare Article via FacebookShare Article via TwitterShare Article via LinkedInShare Article via Email Vstock LLC | Getty Images The idea of...

That plastic bottle of water? Apparently it’s full of plastic. According to the organization Agir pour l’Environment (Acting for the Environment), 78% of bottled water from the best-selling brands in France is contaminated with microplastics.A new study suggests most plastic water bottles in France are full of microplastics, which might have a detrimental effect on the environment and your health“Every week, we ingest an average of 5 grams, the equivalent of a credit card,” the NGO notes in its latest report. These microplastics then contaminate the water cycle, soil, food chain and even our own bodies. Microplastics are tiny, virtually...

Tiny self-propelled robo-fish can swim around, latch on to free-floating microplastics and fix itself if it gets damaged Scientists have designed a tiny robot-fish that is programmed to remove microplastics from seas and oceans by swimming around and adsorbing them on its soft, flexible, self-healing body. Microplastics are the billions of tiny plastic particles which fragment from the bigger plastic things used every day such as water bottles, car tyres and synthetic T-shirts. They are one of the 21st century’s biggest environmental problems because once they are dispersed into the environment through the breakdown of larger plastics they are very...

Microplastic fibres were found deep in the lower lungs of living human beings in almost every person sampled in a recent study by scientists at Hull York Medical School, UK.The study, ‘Detection of microplastics in human lung tissue using μFTIR spectroscopy’, published on 29 March 2022 discovered microplastic particles – present in many Covid masks – in the lung tissue of 11 out of 13 patients undergoing surgery.Polypropylene (“PP”) and polyethylene terephthalate (“PET”) were the most prevalent substances present in the lungs. Detection of microplastics in human lung tissue using μFTIR spectroscopy Some of the microscopic plastic fragments and fibres...

Microplastics – tiny pieces of plastic less than 0.2 of an inch (5mm) in diameter – have been found in human blood for the first time. Scientists in the Netherlands took blood samples from 22 anonymous healthy adult donors and analysed them for particles as small as 0.00002 of an inch. The researchers found that 17 out of the 22 volunteers (77.2 per cent) had microplastics in their blood – a finding described as 'extremely concerning'.

Microplastics—tiny pieces of plastic less than 5 mm in length –– are everywhere, from bottled water to food to air. According to recent estimates, people consume tens of thousands of these particles each year, with unknown health consequences. Now, researchers found that people with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) have more microplastics in their feces than healthy controls, suggesting that the fragments could be related to the disease process. The prevalence of IBD, which includes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, is rising globally. Characterized by chronic inflammation of the digestive tract, IBD can be triggered or made worse by diet and...

Dr. Shanna Swan, a professor of Environmental Medicine & Public Health at Mount Sinai Health System, has warned in a new book that phthalates, a chemical commonly used in the manufacturing of plastics, can shrink penises and decrease male fertility. A study listed in the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which operates under the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, found that the microplastics used in the manufacturing of Covid face masks contain a number of toxic chemicals, including the penis-shrinking phthalates. Dr. Swans’s book “Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering...

Scientists thought it was bad, but it's even worse than they imagined. Now it's a potential catastrophe that will affect all our lives — unless we take action now. Otherwise, life on Earth will be irreparably harmed. I'm not talking about global warming. I'm talking about global warming part II: microplastics! Today, Fox News reported the release of a "groundbreaking study" of Monterey Bay by the Scripps Oceanographic Institute. A Scripps scientist summarized the findings: "Everywhere we looked and in every animal we looked, we found microplastics!" The accompanying film was oddly irrelevant. It showed ocean waters filled with trash...

For more than 30 years, pieces of Garfield telephones kept washing ashore on the beaches of northwestern France, and no one quite knew why. Where was the lasagna-loving cartoon cat coming from? The mystery would puzzle the locals for years. His plastic body parts, first appearing in a crevice of the Brittany coast in the mid-1980s, kept returning no matter how many times beach cleaners recovered them. Sometimes they would find only his lazy bulging eyes, or just his smug face, or his entire fat-cat body, always splayed out in the sand in a very Garfield fashion. From the stray...