Plastic awaits sorting and recycling at Potential Industries, a plant in Wilmington. — CAROLYN COLE/Los Angeles Times/dpa
Warnings about plastic pollution have become increasingly frequent and shrill in recent years due to concerns about its environmental impact and potential effects on human health.
Not only have vast amounts of plastic rubbish been discarded into the world’s seas and oceans, the breaking-down of these items into shards small enough to get into the food chain has prompted some doctors to worry aloud that people could be made ill as a result.
Following recent findings that such minute fragments could be passing from mother to unborn baby or getting into penises and testicles, a team of researchers from several universities have reported that nanoplastics – pieces smaller than a micrometre, or 0.001mm – could be capable of passing through the blood-brain cell barrier.
“Understanding how these particles cross the blood-brain barrier opens new avenues for developing preventive measures against their potential harm,” said Sarka Lehtonen from the University of Eastern Finland, who carried out the research with scientists from the University of Padua, the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research GmbH, the University of Birmingham and other schools.
According to a statement by the University of East Finland, the findings show “the need for further research on their potential neurotoxicity and long-term effects on human health.”
The team’s work is “a significant step forward in the field of nanotoxicology” and could prove “instrumental in shaping future research and regulations regarding nanoplastic pollution and its impact on human health,” the university claimed.
The findings were published the same week that The Ocean Clean-up, a Dutch organisation that has been removing rubbish from the world’s seas, estimated it would cost US$7.5bil (RM29.22mil) to carry out the daunting task of removing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which floats in a swathe of ocean off California and takes up an area around three times the size of France. — dpa
