Modernity has gifted us with many wonders โ a mixed bag, some good and some bad.
In the latter category falls microplastic, now universally found in the food, water, soil, etc. that makes its way into various organs and tissues of the body where it wreaks havoc on human health.
(If youโre wondering why you havenโt heard more about the health threat of microplastics, itโs because the Public Healthโข system hates you and wants you to be sick, and furthermore only prioritizes issues for which there is an expensive and patented pharmaceutical product as the solution. So as soon as Pfizer develops a microplastics vaccine, you can be sure itโll be plastered front and center in corporate media.)
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These things are literally everywhere โ even in freshly laid snowfall in Antarctica.
Viaย Smithsonian Magazineย (emphasis added):
โScientists have found microplasticsโsmall plastic debris about the size of a sesame seedโin freshly fallen snow in Antarctica for the first time. They published their findings in The Cryosphereโฆ
Microplastics have been found in almost every corner of the globe where researchers have looked, including on top of mountains and in remote ocean water. But scientists have not studied microplastics much in the Southern Hemisphere, particularly in Antarctica.
Working with coauthor Laura Revell, an associate professor in environmental physics also at Canterbury, Aves collected snow samples from sites across the Ross Island region of Antarctica, on the side closest to Oceania, including 13 remote locations with minimal human disturbance.
โWe were optimistic that she wouldnโt find any microplastics in such a pristine and remote location,โ Revell says in the statement. They also collected snow from six areas near research stations โso sheโd have at least some microplastics to study.โโฆ
Microplastics have been found in other remote areas of the Earth, including the top of Mount Everest and deep in the Mariana Trench. Earlier this year, researchers found evidence of the tiny plastics in human blood.โ
In other words, you could take up a hermetic existence on the top of the highest mountain peak you could find and you still couldnโt get away from them.
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However, there is hope.
First of all, itโs not beyond the realm of possibility that, at some point, we may devise the means to break them down at mass scale,ย potentially using versatile and much-underappreciated fungi.
In the more immediate term, on a micro-scale, new evidence has emerged that a simple filtering method โ which basically anyone with a handful of kitchen essentials can employ โ might eliminate the vast majority of microplastics from water.
Viaย Science Alertย (emphasis added):
โTiny fragments of microplastics are making their way deep inside our bodies in concerning quantities, significantly through our food and drink.
Scientists have recently found a simple and effective means of removing them from water.
A team from Guangzhou Medical University and Jinan University in China ran tests on both soft water and hard tap water (which is richer in minerals)โฆ
They added in nanoplastics and microplastics before boiling the liquid and then filtering out any precipitates.
In some cases, up to 90 percent of the NMPs were removed by the boiling and filtering process, though the effectiveness varied based on the type of water.
Of course the big benefit is that most people can do it using what they already have in their kitchen.โ
The way it works is that the calcium carbonate in tap water (the gunk that builds up around a pot of boiled water) collects and traps the microplastics, which allows you to then filter out using a strainer like you would with, for instance, tea leaves.
From the study, published inย Environmental Science & Technology Lettersย (emphasis added):
โWe present evidence that polystyrene, polyethylene, and polypropylene NMPs can coprecipitate with calcium carbonate (CaCO3) incrustants in tap water upon boiling. Boiling hard water (>120 mg Lโ1 of CaCO3) can remove at least 80% of polystyrene, polyethylene, and polypropylene NMPs size between 0.1 and 150 ฮผm. Elevated temperatures promote CaCO3 nucleation on NMPs, resulting in the encapsulation and aggregation of NMPs within CaCO3 incrustants. This simple boiling-water strategy can โdecontaminateโ NMPs from household tap water and has the potential for harmlessly alleviating human intake of NMPs through water consumption.โ
Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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