Why are we finding microplastics in human lungs and blood?
Lets start off with what are microplastics? Microplastics are small, 5mm pieces of plastic that we most often hear about being in our water systems. They come from all of the petroleum based plastic products we discard into the landfills each year. As they are ground up, buried, recycled, etc, small particles of plastics make their way into our ecosystem each day. There has been a push to reduce/recycle/reuse of plastic products to keep these microplastics out of our environment as much as possible.
But now we have a new problem.
New data has come out over the last year or so, and we have found microplastics in human lungs and human blood.
Blood: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412022001258
Lungs: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969722020009?via%3Dihub
This article is interesting as well: https://palexander.substack.com/p/polypropylene-a-key-ingredient-in?s=r
Interestingly enough, we did not notice microplastics in the lungs until the article above from Science Direct, due to publish in their journal in July 2022. Where DID the microplastics in the lungs come from? Well that is an interesting finding…..the samples found in the lungs are made of 23% polypropylene, 18% polyethylene teraphalate, and 15% resin. Human inhalation was the cause for these microplastics getting into the lungs. WHAT PRODUCT CAUSED THE MICROPLASTICS INHALATION? Masks. Good ol’ disposable covid masks. Especially the blue surgical masks that everyone can buy at Amazon and any retailer. The chemical components of the blue surgical masks have the SAME MICROPLASTICS we are finding in the lower lobes of lungs. The same blue surgical masks that are given out for free at the door of businesses. The same blue masks that the ER straps on you when you goin for an accident or illness. The damn blue masks. What is interesting here is that we have been doing bronchoscope procedures on patients for decades, and these microplastics in lower lungs are a new finding since the beginning of the covid pandemic. Correlation to mask wearing and mask plastics deteriorating and being directly inhaled is not a difficult conclusion to arrive at.
Have you noticed that when you wear a disposable mask for any extended period of time, the internal side next to your nose and mouth start to slough off and become frayed? It tickles your nose and lips, makes you want to sneeze? Those are microplastics coming off the mask, and you inhale them. In this article https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/study-shows-mask-wearing-increases-inhalation-of-microplastics-found-in-lung-tissues-for-the-first-time/ it is discussed that largest amount of the microplastics in the lungs are not found in the UPPER respiratory tract, they are found DEEP into lung tissues. They are bypassing the normal filtering system of our lungs in our upper bronchioles and going deep into our respiratory system. Canadian health officials even ENCOURAGED wearing the blue surgical masks, and that people should layer them! Below you will see the photo that shows what is found in each portion of the lungs related to microplastics, and the higher concentration lower in the lungs versus upper airway.
Quoted from the above article “Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, in the fall of 2020, said they should be at least three layers instead of two, preferably including a layer of polypropylene fabric. The middle layer of blue surgical masks is melt-blown fabric that generates nano- and microplastics during use and reuse that can lead to the risk breathing the particles in on inhalation.It was not something Tam seemed concerned with, if she was aware of the potential for harm, yet research had already established that people could breathe in tiny inflammatory particles of polypropylene and that work environments with high levels of microplastics also had high levels of disease among workers. In 1998, a U.S. study identified microplastics in the upper lungs of cancer patients and concluded that they were “candidate agents contributing to the risk of lung cancer.”
So what about microplastics in our blood? In the study above published on March 24th, 2022, the most common microplastics found were, again, Polyethylene terephthalate, polyethylene and also polymers of styrene. The concern here is what size of microplastics are found, our body cannot metabolize those, so if the liver is unable to process them and send them to our GI tract for feces excretion, if they stay in the blood, can they cause clotting of our micro vessels and capillaries? Below is a photo of the concentrations found in whole blood from 22 people sampled. The question we are now trying to answer is HOW did microplastics get into our blood circulation system? What introduced microplastics into our blood? Environmental? Products we use? Medications? That is to be determined.
As I have stated many times, I am freedom of choice. You choose your own behaviors to mitigate your personal risk factors. You choose if you want to vaccinate or not. You choose if you want to wear a mask or not. BUT……these disposable masks should have a warning on them as they are causing negative health consequences. Not to mention, the microns of a virus are far smaller than the pores on the mask and are essentially useless in viral protection but I digress……..And for those of you who are environmentally friendly conscious, they are a disaster for the ecosystem as they take around 400 years to break down and disappear. Billions of blue masks are sitting in landfills, on sidewalks, curb gutters, parking lots……… this is a multi factorial problem at this point.