United States: Scientists have found for the first time that micro size microplastic fibers are embedded in the human brain.
Scientists in Germany and Brazil concluded that eight out of 15–autopsied adults had in their olfactory bulb, which is the part of the brain associated with smells, microplastics.
As reported by the HealthDay, it was perhaps inhaled over a lifetime because miniscule spherical microplastics are in the air everywhere and can be easily inhaled.
Even so, until now, most people have believed that microplastics could not enter the brain, given that the human body has a protective mechanism called the blood-brain barrier.
But, in the present work, such a connection has been described: “There is the potential pathway for the transportation of microplastics to the brain”, explains the group led by Luis Fernando Amato-Lourenco, of the Free University Berlin, and Thais Mauad, Ph.D., associate Professor of pathology in the University of Sao Paolo in Brazil.
The team share the details of their study on September 16 in the JAMA Network Open.
“If much smaller nanoplastics penetrate the body barriers with more ease, then the overall total toxicity of plastic particles can be considerably more,” Mauad said in a statement to the Plastic Health Council, an organization that promotes plastics reduction and funded the study.
“What is worrying is the ability of such a particle to be engulfed by cells and change their operation” Mauad said this.
The new study focused on 15 post-mortem brains which were part of a survey used for routine post mortem of the residents of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The people who are buried there were between 33 and the age of 100 years and with an average age if 69. 5 years.
A total of 16 synthetic polymer [plastic] particles and fibers were found in the brain olfactory bulbs of 8 of the 15 deceased people investigated by the researchers.
The plastic was polypropylene in nearly 44% of cases and this is one of the most widely used types of plastic and it is used in the packaging, clothing, home accessories among others.
This implies that ‘indoor environments for inhaled microplastics’, that was the conclusion of the team.
So just how the microplastic fragments invading the brain?
Amato-Lourenco and the colleagues point out that nasal mucosa which is lying outside the brain may interact with the cerebrospinal fluid to allow entry of the microplastics into the olfactory bulb via very tiny perforations in bony structures found in this area.