Are microplastics from car tyres contributing to heart disease?
"Add one more likely culprit to the long list of known cardiovascular risk factors including red meat, butter, smoking and stress: microplastics.
“In a study released Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, an international team of physicians and researchers showed that surgical patients who had a build-up of micro and nanoplastics in their arterial plaque had a 2.1 times greater risk of nonfatal heart attack, nonfatal stroke or death from any cause in the three years post surgery than those who did not.”
The research is particularly noteworthy, given that one of the biggest sources of microplastic pollution is the synthetic rubber in car tyres: https://aus.social/@ajsadauskas/112015017609398126
So it’s not just the sedentary lifestyles that car-dependent planning encourages that’s causing health issues.
And it’s not just exhaust fumes either.
There’s also the health impacts of microplastics, including from car tyres.
Worth noting as well that internal documents from the big oil companies show that they knew since the 1970s that recycling wasn’t going to solve the problem of plastic pollution. They promoted it anyway: https://aus.social/@ajsadauskas/112064312364853769
#tyres #tyre #car #microplastic #microplastics #pollution #environment @fuck_cars #fuckcars
@PowerCrazy @NotBillMurray You have to define “wear items” to include plastic packaging for that to be true. Probably also food and water processing as well, like plastic pipes.
I should have clarified, they aren’t a significant source of microplastics until disposal, since plastic disposal is a fiction. I.e. If you have a plastic water bottle and you drink the water, you aren’t going to get any significant micro-plastic just because the water was stored in plastic. Same with PVC piping for water, or whatever. However if you have a road near a body of water, you will get a very significant amount of microplastics buildup in that water that is much greater then from water stored in a bottle. In the long term, all plastic becomes micro-plastic and gets everywhere, but wear items are absolutely the leading cause in both volume and the cause of increasing microplastics around the world.
Are you sure about that? I’m asking because I recently saw a story where they measured microplastics in a beverage from a plastic water bottle and found that it was a lot higher than previously thought, but I don’t remember reading how harmful it is.
@PowerCrazy Actually plastic water bottles leave water they contain LOADED with microplastics:
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/10/1223730333/bottled-water-plastic-microplastic-nanoplastic-study
It’s not out of the question that the significant health risks we’re finding for ultraprocessed food are partly, or even mostly, from microplastics introduced in processing or storage.
Wear makes microplastic issues much worse, yes, but plastic is turning out to be quite bad enough even new.