Plastic catastrophe?

Laura lays out her lunch. The potato salad she made was not quite enough, so she bought some roasted vegetables at the supermarket. To wash it all down, she has a bottle of fizzy water. Yum!

What she does not realise is that she is also eating plastic. It comes from the water bottle, the packaging of her roasted vegetables and the box she carried her salad in. It even comes from the board she chopped the potatoes on.

She does not realise this because the fragments are so small. She has read about microplastics, meaning any piece of plastic under five millimetres long. But there are also nanoplastics, which are particles too small to see.

Together, the two types of plastic are known as MNPs.

Scientists already knew that they could enter the body and move around it. Now, more worryingly, experiments have shown that they can be carried by blood into the brain.¹ The study on mice even found that MNPs entered their brains just two hours after eating.

Around 60% of plastic produced each year is used for packaging food and drink. But after a while it breaks into MNPs - particularly if it is exposed to heat.

Experts believe that someone who drinks regularly from plastic bottles takes in over 90,000 particles a year.

Babies are especially at risk, because of drinking milk from bottles which are heated to steriliseMake something completely clean and free from bacteria. them.

A study of fish showed that ones exposed to MNPs grew less and had fewer young.

The full effect on humans is not yet known. But there are worries that MNPs could damage the heart, lungs and gut. They could also increase the risk of diseases like diabetesA medical condition causing there to be too much sugar in the blood. .

To guard against this, experts say you should drink from glass or steel water bottles. You should also use natural packaging for food.

It is also good to wear cotton or woollen clothes. Putting syntheticAn artificial substance or material. It is made by humans using chemical processes, rather than occurring naturally.  ones through the washing machine releases huge numbers of MNP microfibres.

Yes: MNPs are so prevalent that even if we bought nothing with plastic in it we could not escape them. We do not know exactly what they are doing to our bodies, but it cannot be good.  

No: We constantly come up against things that are bad for us, from germs to food, and our bodies find ways of dealing with them. Even if MNPs prove damaging, we will build up a resistance to them.

Or... Plastic may be doing us some harm, but it has also done us a huge amount of good. Packing food and drink in it makes them easier to transport and store and helps keep prices down.