this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
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The Climate Crisis

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The average brain weighs 1300-1400 grams. If 0.5% of that is plastic by weight, your brain contains 6.5 - 7 grams of plastic. The average plastic credit card weighs 5 grams.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/21/microplastics-brain-pollution-health

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I don't think this is true

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Do you lack reading comprehension, or are you just in denial?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

I gave the study a read. It's in preprint, it's yet to be peer reviewed and the method they used is atypical. Yeah I think disbelief is a pretty reasonable response since it's hard to imagine that much plastic wouldn't be making noticeable changes in behavior/physiology. But it's possible and the research seems rigorous

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What information did I present that was untrue? I guess technically there's more plastic in your brain than required to make a plastic credit card.

Here's additional supporting research.

https://lemmy.world/comment/11941207

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

From my understanding of the study they used an unverified method on a small part of the brain to get the amount of plastic in the entire brain. Which can be misleading because if you only look at the parts of the brain that are microplastics, the brain is 100% plastic. There hasn't been widespread replication of the results yet either nor has the paper been peer reviewed.

I'm sceptical especially with the microplastic doomer narrative going around. As far as I know the danger of microplastics on the human body is yet to be determined. But it's definitely alarming I just don't think it's responsible to be saying there's a credit card in your brain.