Poisoned by Microplastics By Mrs Vera West
A report in the leading medical journal, the New England Journal of Medicine, states that microplastics have been linked to an increased risk of death from heart disease. The Italian scientists who did the study found that from their sample of people undergoing surgery for clogged arteries, their arteries were full of microplastics. Around 60 percent of the patients experienced this clogging up, and 20 percent of those patients died within three years from heart attack or a stroke.
What can be done? One suggestion is to abandon single use plastics, making the plastic objects more durable and less likely to produce particles. But the modern urban environment is full of microplastics, so it is going to be difficult to control this. Avoid plastics, such as drink containers as much as possible.
"Microplastics have been linked to increased risk of death in a small but significant study that is one of the first to establish a correlation between plastic in the body and Australia's biggest killer – heart disease.
More than half of people undergoing surgery for clogged arteries had blood vessels riddled with microplastics, the study found, and those patients had a far greater chance of heart attack, stroke and death compared to people whose arteries were free from plastic.
Italian scientists recruited 257 people with carotid artery disease, where fatty plaque deposits restrict blood flow to the brain. Microplastics lurked in the plaques of about 60 per cent of patients.
Three years after undergoing surgery, 20 per cent of the patients with microplastics in their arteries had died, or suffered a stroke or heart attack.
Only 7.5 per cent of patients free from microplastics suffered the same fate.
Once the scientists controlled for other risk factors, they put the people with microplastics in their arteries at 4½ times greater risk of heart attack, stroke and death.
The study spurred influential US public health expert Dr Philip J Landrigan to call for single-use plastics to be ditched.
Finding microplastics in plaque was a breakthrough discovery in itself, which raised urgent questions, he said."
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