The demagoguery against plastics continues! This time they claim they have actual evidence for physiological damages.
Plastic become widely available since about the 1950s. If it was so dangerous, we would be all dead or seriously ill by now! And what about all the advantages of plastic.
Alert: Plastophobia is a serious disorder. Please seek immediate medical help! (Caution: satire)
How relevant is this latest discovery in the real world? Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are part of the normal cellular metabolism.
PS = polystyrene
"Microplastics can trigger chemical reactions that could damage cells, suggests new research published in Nature that could help explain links between microplastics and inflammation and disease.
How it works: Microplastics exposed to water generate chemicals known as reactive oxygen species (ROS), which can damage biological molecules like DNA—and contribute to cancer, heart disease, and neurological diseases. ..."
"... But something important happens when a large piece of plastic fragments into micro- and nanoparticles. Its surface area increases dramatically relative to its volume. Vastly more of the material is now exposed to its surroundings. ...
Min’s group at Columbia University also led a 2024 study that developed a laser based microscope technology and found that on average, a liter of bottled water contained some 240,000 detectable plastic fragments (mostly nanometer-sized plastic, nanoplastics)—10 to 100 times more fragments than had previously been estimated. That study led to a growing recognition that micro and nanoplastics exist throughout the food system. ...
Subsequent research in prominent journals including New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Medicine, and Nature Health have found links between micro and nanoplastic exposure and heart attack, stroke, dementia, and brain tumor. But, given its supposed inertness, the mechanism by which microplastics could contribute to these illnesses had been unclear. ...
“Our research found that when microplastics interact with water, as they do when they’re in bottled water, or when they’re absorbed into our bloodstream, they spontaneously generate what we call reactive oxygen species (ROS),” ..."
"... Although the molecular mechanisms remain elusive and are probably multifactorial ..."
From the abstract:
"Plastics have become an integral part of our modern society, largely because they are generally regarded as chemically inert under normal circumstances.
However, plastics fragmented into microplastics (less than 5 mm in size) have recently raised significant public concerns, and have been detected widely across ecosystems and human tissues with increasing environmental and health risks.
Here we show that commodity microplastics exhibit intrinsic physicochemical activity in water, manifested by the spontaneous generation of reactive oxygen species that increases with interfacial hydrophobicity and strongly correlates with interfacial electrostatics.
Ab initio calculations support these observations and reveal that hydroxide oxidation becomes energetically more favourable at increasingly hydrophobic microplastic–water interfaces through the combined effects of partial solvation and electrostatics.
These interfacial properties and the resulting oxidative chemistry have direct implications for biomolecular adsorption, protein aggregation, and even cellular damage.
Together, our findings challenge the prevailing paradigm of plastic inertness, identify a possibly overlooked mechanism for the detrimental effects of microplastics on health and the environment, and contribute to a fundamental understanding of the structure–activity relationship of interfacial water, which may inform the design of safer and more sustainable plastic materials."
Microplastics Are Chemically Active, and Could Cause Biological Harm (original news release) "A new study found that when microplastics contact water, their surfaces can become chemically reactive; it could be how they get us sick."
Fig. 1: Spontaneous radical generation and surface electrostatics at PS microplastic–water interfaces.
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