Your Food Packaging Is Shedding Microplastics Into Every Meal, Study Reveals
A painstaking review of 103 scientific studies on microplastic food contamination found actions as simple as opening a plastic drink bottle or using a plastic chopping board can shave off tiny particles of common polymers.
Even glass bottles that use a plastic gasket, plastic-lined pizza boxes, plastic-lined disposable coffee cups, plastic tea bags, plastic wrappings, and microwaveable plastic containers shed microplastic like a Persian cat sheds fur in spring.
The problem, a team led by biologist Lisa Zimmermann of the non-profit Food Packaging Forum in Switzerland says, is ubiquitous.
Related: Microplastics Could Accumulate in Our Brains More Than in Kidneys And Livers
"This is the first systematic evidence of how normal and intended use of foodstuffs packaged in plastics can be contaminated with micro- and nanoplastics," Zimmermann told CNN.
"We found food packaging is actually a direct source of the micro- and nanoplastics measured in food."
The more scientists look into micro- and nanoplastics, or MNPs, the more we see just how widespread they have become. These are tiny pieces of material, too small to see, released by a variety of polymers as they're used or break up in the environment.
Plastic is ubiquitous in our modern society, providing a cheap, easily manufactured solution to everything from storage to clothing to furnishings. In recent decades it has become clear its resistance to degrading doesn't mean it is impervious to crumbling into smaller fragments, which easily filter through ecosystems.
Studies have found microplastics throughout the human body, including placentas. It's been found in every major organ in mice, including their fetuses.
What makes this even more worrying is that we just have very little idea about the health impacts, although it's not looking promising: A study last year found that cardiac and stroke patients with a high concentration of microplastics in their carotid artery plaque had a significantly elevated risk of death.
Zimmermann and her colleagues examined 103 studies that have investigated the presence of plastic particles in food and food simulants. From these studies, they extracted 600 entries about food contact articles, of which 96 percent reported the presence of MNPs.
Those entries were also compiled into a searchable and filterable dashboard that anyone can access, allowing users to home in on different types of food contact articles, from packaging to baby bottles, as well as different types of plastic.
Related: Glass Bottles Actually Contain More Microplastics, Scientists Find
Of particular note, the researchers found, is that multiple studies found that for some reusable plastic items, such as melamine bowls, the amount of microplastics shed increased with each wash. This suggests that repeated heating and abrasion increases the rate at which these items degrade.
The researchers also note that ultra-processed food contains more microplastic than minimally processed food. The reason for this is simple: more processing steps mean greater exposure to plastic food-processing equipment, resulting in more MNPs in the final product.
Their findings, the researchers say, strongly indicate that not only is a lot more research warranted, but also that more needs to be done to minimize the use of plastics in food packaging and preparation.
"Our study shows that under intended or foreseeable conditions of use, plastic food contact articles can release MNPs into foodstuffs," they write in their paper.
"The contribution of plastic food contact articles to human MNP exposure is currently unclear and warrants further investigation. Further research is also necessary to establish human health impacts associated with MNP exposures, but a precautionary approach aimed at limiting human exposure to MNPs, including from food contact articles, is prudent."
You can access the interactive dashboard here, and the paper has been published in npj Science of Food.
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Medscape
30 minutes ago
- Medscape
Is Red Meat Bad for You? The Proof Is in the Processing
This transcript has been edited for clarity. Is red meat bad for you? On the one hand, meat makes you strong, and it's every American's God-given right to grill a steak on his barbecue during the summer. I believe this came up in a church synod at some point… But on the other hand, the WHO (World Health Organization) has declared red meat a carcinogen, with a hot dog being as bad as cigarette. Yes, that was headline when the report came out. So, how do we reconcile these opposing ideas? Part of the solution is realizing the WHO organization in question is based in France. Maybe they're still angry about the "freedom fries" thing, but actually examining the nuances of the French language will help us understand what's going on. If you don't speak French, don't worry I got you covered. Ce n'est pas si difficile de tout n'inquiétez vous pas. Vous allez voir . Sit back, grab a baguette, and let's find out how dangerous red meat really is. I'm Christopher Labos, and this is Medscape's On Second Thought . Bonjour, tout le monde! Now, meat doesn't seem like it should be a complex topic to study, but it is. Many people around the world eat animals, but we don't all eat the same animals. For example, this is a cow, often used to make hamburger and steak. And this is Tobi, God's perfect angel who gets a more elaborate birthday party than I do each year. He is my son, and I would throw myself in front of a moving car for him. By necessity, when we do medical research on meat, we are lumping together a whole lot of a different human behavior, with people eating different types of animals based on where they live. There's no real alternative, and frankly, you can't let the perfect become the enemy of the good. Most credible research will at least separate out red meat from white meat. But most people don't really know what the difference is. If you thought pork was white meat, you're wrong. You think that because of a marketing slogan. In 1987, the National Pork Board paid for the marketing campaign "Pork. The Other White Meat." They were basically trying to position pork as an alternative to chicken. People also usually think veal or deer is white meat. They think the difference between white and red meat has something to do the age of the animal, whether its free range, or the color of the meat. But it doesn't. Chefs and restaurants say all kinds of things, but the real definition is simple: Mammals are red meat, and birds are white meat. Now, there's another thing we need to explain. We have red meat, but we also have processed red meat. Processed red meat is when red meat is transformed in some way — and that doesn't mean cooking. If you just take a piece of steak and cook it on your barbecue or in the oven, that's not processed meat. Processing is doing things like salting the meat, smoking it, or curing it. Processed meat includes items like bacon, sausages, hot dogs, salami, corn beef, and smoked meat. So, when we talk about red meat and health risks, we are primarily talking about processed red meat. And the people talking about this are the International Agency for Research in Cancer (IARC). IARC is a WHO organization, and their mandate is to promote international research on cancer — particularly its cause. One of their programs is a monograph program that evaluates the evidence of the carcinogenicity of specific exposures. Here's where a knowledge of French is going to come in handy. IARC likes to look at something called the hazard, rather than the risk. In fact, every time they have a press conference, they spend about 5 minutes explaining the difference to people, which begs the question: Why not just study risk and be done with it? In English, those words seem pretty much like synonyms. And with the way most people use them, they essentially are. But in French, they are slightly different. Le risque et le hasard don't quite mean the same thing in French. To be fair, their definitions are technically different in English, as well — as those of you who read the dictionary for fun already know. A risk is the probability that something harmful will happen. A hazard is a potential source of harm. For example, a grenade is a hazardous thing to have on your desk, but the risk of it exploding is quite low… unless you pull the pin. IARC is researching hazard. They are evaluating whether something is associated with cancer, not how risky that something is. IARC categorizes everything into groups: carcinogenic to humans, probably carcinogenic, possibly carcinogenic, or not classifiable. There is technically a "not carcinogenic" group, but there's nothing in there. Well, there was one substance in there for a bit, but they removed it. Comment below if you know what that substance is. Here's a hint: You find it in yoga pants. So, IARC has never found anything that doesn't cause cancer. When they go hunting for heffalumps and woozles, they find heffalumps and woozles. To be fair, which I am under no contractual obligation to be, they are a WHO agency, and they are tasked to review substances that are of interest to world governments. As such, they are not going to review stuff that is clearly unrelated to cancer… but still. They put a lot of stuff in Group 1, the (definitely) carcinogenic group. Tamoxifen is in Group 1, and as most of you know, tamoxifen treats breast cancer. It has saved countless lives. Calling it a carcinogen sounds a bit daft, but it is associated with abnormal uterine bleeding and an increased risk of uterine cancer. And the data is pretty uncontroversial, right? Thus, IARC says, 'We are certain this association is true, therefore it goes in Group 1.' But what's the risk of tamoxifen causing uterine cancer? It's 0.3% on the absolute risk scale. It's basically zero and a heck of a lot lower than the breast cancer risk. Clearly, you should take the drug if you have ER-positive breast cancer. So, this is the problem. IARC is saying how certain they are that something is dangerous, but not how dangerous something is. Conclusive data will land a substance into Group 1: carcinogenic. Strong but not conclusive data goes into Group 2a: probably carcinogenic. If there's only some evidence, contradictory evidence, or maybe just animal data, you get sorted into Group 2b: possibly carcinogenic. And Group 3 is used when there's not much data to work off of. Generally, their system works okay. They put tobacco, asbestos, and gamma radiation in Group 1, which makes sense. But then also put stuff like birth control pills, estrogen, and tamoxifen in Group 1. Sure, there is a small increased risk of breast cancer with birth control pills if you have a family history, but it's a pretty small risk and frankly negligible for the general population — plus, it's largely outweighed by the decrease in ovarian cancer risk that comes with using birth control pills. But IARC isn't doing that type of nuanced calculation. They say, 'Estrogen causes breast cancer. The pill has estrogen. The link is proven. The pill goes into Group 1.' So, it was IARC that reviewed all the data about processed red meat and declared it a Group 1 carcinogen. Fun fact: Unprocessed red meat was only put in Group 2A because the data was less solid. For anybody grilling a steak right now, this doesn't apply to you. But not everybody agreed with IARC. The Nutritional Recommendations (NutriRECS) Consortium was a group of researchers who also reviewed the data on red meat and came to a completely different conclusion. Their analysis was motivated by two things: 1) the funding they received from the beef industry (this is why we can't have nice things), and 2) they dismissed much of the research because it comes from observational cohorts, not randomized controlled trials. In food science, randomized controlled trials are hard to conduct, because telling people what to eat is often met with "make me." Regardless, the NutriRECS Consortium conclusion was, 'Keep eating meat, as the data is uncertain because most of it is observational.' This conclusion is a bit reductionist to me, because we have a lot of observational data pointing toward health risks associated with processed red meat, and I have a hard time believing all the stuff added to processed red meat is doing us any favors. But let's take the IARC assessment at face value. They are convinced by the hazard or the hasard. But what's the risk? The cancer risk is most clear cut for colon cancer, which is pretty logical. Your lifetime risk of colon cancer is about 4%, assuming you're of general risk with no family history or genetic risk factors. It's actually 4.2% for males and 4.0% for females, according to the 2022 Cancer Statistics from the American Cancer Society. But let's say 4% for everyone — just for simplicity. The IARC report estimated that eating an extra 50 g of processed meat per day, every day, increased your risk of colorectal cancer by 18%. Take 4%, multiply it by 1.18, and you get 4.72%. So, let's say 5% if we're rounding. All this to say, if you eat hot dogs every day of your life, your risk of getting colon cancer goes up by 1 percentage point on the absolute scale. Now, on first instinct you might say, "Pfff, that's nothing. Pass the bratwurst." But 1% on the absolute scale is not trivial. That's thousands of cases per year. Millions of cases over the course of your lifetime in a country of 300 million people. It has some important public health implications. Is the risk high enough for us to stop killing and eating Bambi's mother? Hard to say. It's not negligible, but it's not astronomical either. And there are economic and environmental factors to keep in mind — issues that are often forgotten when we talk about medicine. I will stress one point, though. The IARC estimates of 1% absolute risk increase are about daily consumption of processed meat. You don't need to eat jerky every day of your life. For Medscape, I'm Dr Christopher Labos… with Tobi.
Gizmodo
2 hours ago
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China Is Building an AI Robot Uterus, and Are We Just Basically ‘Dune' Now?
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It has not said whether it is also developing a humanoid placenta or if that is already part of the robot uterus. 'This is a revolutionary step,' Kaiwa said in a statement. 'Our robots could help scientists explore the intricacies of gestation and, someday, provide alternatives to biological reproduction.' More worrying, there have been very few reports of any ethical vetting of what Kaiwa is using to test this new technology or how advanced it is. There is serious ethical debate over the future of human reproduction and how a robotic component would affect the relationships and ownership of embryos or children conceived or delivered that way, particularly in countries like the U.S., in which some states recognize embryos as property. The pros? If true and ethically vetted, this new technology could potentially open new avenues for infertility research and reproductive assistance. It could provide surrogacy at a much reduced cost of around $14,000 (the cost of the robot) for people who can't have a child, compared to a human surrogacy fee of about $100,000 to $200,000 in the U.S. The cons? The patchwork of laws applying to reproductive tech is a changing pattern depending on the country, the region, the governing bodies (like the European Union), cultural roles, religious rules, and the rights of parenthood and surrogates. Who would own each part of the process of creating a human fetus in a robot would have to be exhaustively studied and debated, and it would very likely fall short of most definitions of bioethical standards. Who then oversees that process and enforces its rules should there be infractions is a whole other ball of legal and ethical wax. The prospect of these robots being artificially intelligent raises another important issue. Super-sophisticated robots may eventually be granted personhood status, meaning they'd be protected under the same laws as human beings. And should these robots eventually feel and experience emotions in a manner similar to humans, that would introduce yet another layer of ethical and legal complexity. An artificial womb could also help human babies survive extreme prematurity and prevent serious complications like brain injuries, lung damage, or blindness. Indeed, advances in neonatal care may drive this technology forward, regardless of any overt attempt to create a robotic uterus. Conversely, critics worry about the potential misuse or dehumanization of the gestation process, noting that artificial wombs could lead to creating 'human-like entities' without full biological rights or moral considerations. 'Pregnancy is an extremely complex process, with each step being extremely delicate and critical,' Yi Fuxian, an obstetrician at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, told Newsweek. He said the robot is 'likely just a gimmick' and that synthetic gestation has caused problems in sheep, and that 'many health risks emerge at different ages, not to mention mental health issues.' Recent reporting has found that China and South Korea's tech sectors are watching the pregnancy robot saga closely. South Korea already has robots as 10% of its workforce. In January 2024, its Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy unveiled the Fourth Intelligent Robot Basic Plan, which will plow $2.24 billion in public and private investments by 2030 to advance automation across most business sectors. Countries with declining birth rates like Japan and South Korea may also be major marketplaces for a synthetic uterus. South Korea has declared its lack of babies a national emergency and has been attempting to lure people into becoming parents with a new ministry focused on providing housing, immigration, and other demographic markers that may be keeping people from having any or more children. The county has already invested more than $200 billion in fertility programs over the last 18 years, but thus far the birth rate has stayed low. Maybe having a government-subsidized pregnancy robot could change that.
Fox News
2 hours ago
- Fox News
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