INTERESTING ENGINEERING – Imagine eating a bowl of fish soup at a high-end restaurant. It tastes mind-numbingly good. The staff at the restaurant woke up super early to get the freshest sea produce at the fish market. And one of the best culinary chefs overlooked the preparation of the fish soup you’re slowly devouring.
Not to burst your bubble, but what if we told you that even though the fish you’re consuming has been washed, cleaned, and deboned with high precision, it possibly contains up to 47 particles of microplastics?
The annual human microplastic consumption ranges anywhere between 39,000 and 52,000 particles, depending on age and sex.
We have established that there are discernable quantities of microplastics, their size ranging between 1µm and 5mm, that have made their way into our bloodstream, brain, semen, and food.
And now, in a pilot study, it has been found that microplastics are in heart tissues as well.
As per the American Chemical Society’s official release, the researchers analyzed the heart tissues of 15 people before and after they underwent heart surgery.
Plastic hearts
Using a laser direct infrared chemical imaging system and scanning electron microscopy for their investigation, the team found that microplastics existed in the tissues taken both prior to and post-surgery.
The researchers also collected blood samples from half of the participants, both before and after the surgery. Nine types of microplastics were detected in blood samples, both pre-and postoperative. The maximum diameter of the microplastic was 184 μm.
In the blood samples, the type and diameter distribution of microplastics showed a change in size after the surgical procedure, suggesting that microplastics were introduced to the body during surgery as well.
Nine kinds of plastics found
However, the researchers noted that microplastics were not universally present in all tissue samples. Nine types of particles were found across five types of tissues with the largest measuring 469 μm The largest microplastic measured 469 μm (microns or micrometers) in diameter.
It’s estimated that one truck full of plastic garbage is dumped into the ocean every minute and there are approximately 14 million tons of microplastics sitting on the ocean floor …
