Doesn’t everything everywhere contain microplastics? Brains, the rain, livers, ovaries, the external ovaries that guys have, blood, bone marrow.
Although this is a scary number, it is worth considering this comes from one hospital and 10 patients. It is a strong hint to pursue research in this area but I wouldn’t call it a proof yet
It’s also worth noting that microplastics appear in basically all body tissue, including the brain, when looking at samples from cadavers in recent years. I don’t remember the name offhand but one study found enough microplastics in the average brain to make a plastic spoon.
So this might be more of a correlative thing, hopefully. Because the world ain’t stopping with plastic everything
one study found enough microplastics in the average brain to make a plastic spoon
What the fuck does this mean for Spoon Theory‽
This needs to be the top comment, the headline is extremely misleading
I don’t know if it is misleading or simply a lack of scientific literacy from the reporter. I can see how the hospital communicated to news outlets to push their findings to get money, and the reporter saw the strong 90% and rolled with it because he doesn’t know better. Or at least I prefer to think this is the reasoning instead of malicious intent.
If a reporter is reporting on science, scientific literacy is literally their job. Excuses like this allow reports like lions main cures dementia, or x new food is proven to make you live longer. It is explicitly the job of a reporter to know the subject they are reporting on.
And 100% contain dihydrogen monoxide.
Dash is all you need.
90% of non-cancerous prostates too.
Goddamn. This is probably why prostate cancer is sky rocketing. I am pretty sure I got it, but I doubt I can afford to get checked. Wothless fucking life anyway.
I saw someone else in another thread post they weren’t too expensive (relatively) to get checked. I think someone said something like $1500 uninsured in USA, and googles AI answer says on average $2400.
Not cheap, but it’s not some crazy $20,000 bill kinda thing.
Nobody who can’t afford insurance can afford 2400
$2400 every few years.
Ya that’s not good for routine checks which is what should be normal, but if you think something is actively wrong its an option, or at least on the lower end of the scale price wise if that’s where you happen to live. That doesn’t count for what happens if its positive and you’re uninsured either.
To me $2400 is some crazy bill kinda thing.
I’m gonna die soon too I guess , I’d rather not even know at this point. Hope I can figure it out in time to try crack and heroin which are at least somewhat affordable
That’s horrible, I’m sorry you’re going through that. Is there not any free way to get it checked out in your country?
In the US the process is to become too sick to work so you qualify for government assistance and hope some part of your safety net can keep you out of homelessness and cross your fingers for filling out paperwork correctly.
I am trying. But my state is facing heavy brain drain. And honestly it’s taking all I got to even care right now.
My mom is sick too. She keeps denying it. And wants to visit Hawaii which we have been trying for years to set up and now is our last chance and I simply can’t even live with myself if I let that chance go.
Dr.'s hate this one trick - tell them you’re facing issues peeing and you’ll get recommended to a urologist. Even with my family history of prostate cancer I couldn’t get one until I started having issues with my stream. Sure enough my prostate is slightly enlarged even at 40 and am now on meds for it.
Researchers also found that these fragments appeared in greater amounts inside cancerous tumors than in nearby noncancerous prostate tissue.
For those who want to give an opinion based on even a smidge more than just the title.
%90 of human tissues probably contain microplastics. title sounds like baity. Is it significantly less or more than other tissues is the question.
The article states that cancerous areas had ~2.5x more microplastics than the surrounding non-cancerous areas. It could be a chicken and egg/correlation≠causation situation, (is cancer caused by microplastics, or do cancerous cells attract microplastics?) but the article does outline that cancer cells clearly had more microplastics.
It should still be compared to differences in other resources being transported to the tissue, see my answer below. I am not a fan of microplastics, I don’t try to discredit their health effects. It is just that this much information does not help much. I understand that causation would be much harder to prove, but at least one should try to prove for instance that ratio of cancerous to healthy tissue microplastics is much higher than the same ratio other for other stuff that tissues generally transport by blood vessels. This would atleast show that there is an extraordinary relation between the tissue and microplastics in the context of cancer. It could still be causation on the other direction, such as “maybe tissue structure of prostate cancer allows it to absorb microplastics more than other types of resources” but even that would be a useful piece of information.
Potentially, as cancer cells don’t switch off and die the same way, they have a longer lifespan to accumulate microplastics. Especially if the body’s disposal of dead cells actually manages to clear at least some of the microplastics from the body.
Cancerous tumors tend to siphon more resources than healthy cells. It’s not surprising that they’d have a higher concentration of microplastics
It’s about 2.5x more than the surrounding non-cancerous prostate tissue.
My complaint was more about the baity title. Nevertheless cancer tissues generate more blood vessels around them to transport more resources to the tissue. A better metric would likely be something that normalizes the amount of microplastics by inflow of total particles. Even other tissue resource densities might serve the purpose. But anything else is either bad science communication or bad science.
It’s definitely not establishing causation, I agree. But showing a correlation isn’t bad science. It could just be that because tumors are more resource intensive they accumulate more plastics. But at the very least they should have identified the specific plastics they found.
They are also found everywhere else, what does such statement try to imply?
If you read the article, the concentration was 2.5x higher than non-cancerous tissue. That’s a statistically significant increase.
To be “2.5x the reference” a “statistically significant” deviation depends exclusively of the errors, including systematics, and I doubt that such has been so strongly constrained, known the abnormal behaviour and growing of cancer tissues in general versus none, not to mention that even if such can be evaluated as a significant deviation it does not imply causation, it can perfectly be consequence of the sample argument before (abnormal grown, which may imply abnormal densities easily) so I am still at a loss of the conclusions…
I never said a word about causation. Being statistically significant doesn’t imply causation.
Plastic seems to I be a massive problem
I think that it’ll be the final nail in humanity’s coffin.
Climate Change is really bad, but humans are going to survive it, although in greatly reduced numbers for a long time.
But plastics currently have a measured negative impact on fertility rates. Can’t survive as a species if you can’t reproduce.
Can’t survive as a species if you can’t reproduce
Sounds good. Collectively humans are such unbelievable fuckups that we deserve to die out
No disagreement here. Agent Smith was right about us being a virus.
So is lab techique that allows microparticle contamination, leading to over-measurement of microplastics.
Post a source if you are going to say things like that
Oh, that’s just the credit card I eat sometimes. I like to go down to the fridge on the weekend and shove that shit in like an atm. My prostate makes the “munch munch” ticket feeder sound every time.
Notably, tumor tissue contained significantly more plastic. On average, cancerous samples had about 2.5 times the concentration found in healthy prostate tissue (about 40 micrograms of plastic per gram of tissue compared with 16 micrograms per gram).
Still, correlation does not imply causation. It might just be that because of the nature of what tumors are, they get stuck with more microplastics. The biggest problem with this study is that there are known carcinogens in some types of plastics over others, and it seems to outright choose to dismiss any attempt at distinction for the sake of the microplastic boogieman.
Or maybe people that have unhealthy lifestyles that generally might include more ultra-processed foods or living conditions more susceptible to microplastics intake. IOW more plastics packaged foods and drinks, living near roadways where tire particles and exhaust both add to poor health and stress, etc.
Yeah, I remember reading that tires are the biggest microplastic contributors. Those are some good points.
All tumours, no exception, contain dihydrogen monoxide.
Notably, tumor tissue contained significantly more plastic. On average, cancerous samples had about 2.5 times the concentration found in healthy prostate tissue (about 40 micrograms of plastic per gram of tissue compared with 16 micrograms per gram).
Sure, though it’s to be expected that everything contains water in the body. To expect microplastics, however, is kind of different – leaving aside their showing a legitimate difference in microplastic quantity between healthy and unhealthy prostates.
Correlation still doesn’t prove causation. Tumors process resources different than surrounding cells. The worst thing about the study is that it chooses to focus on microplastics without distinction when we know certain types of plastics have far higher carcinogenic risk than others, it would have just taken than slight bit more effort to actually make it worthwhile.
Naturally, more studies need to be conducted and microplastics have only been intensively studied beginning this past decade (PFAS being separate and longer). Similar to the carnivore fad diet, odds are exceedingly-high that having microplastics is not good for us but long-term and fully causal studies have not fully identified all mechanistic linkages. Yet I recall tobacco industries rhetorically hiding behind these arguments in a similar manner despite growing concerns from scientists and medical professionals.
I just take issue with the implication of the other user that this is as harmless as ubiquitous and as fearmongering as water. That in itself is absurd.
Microplastics should not be in our fucking bodies. Water should.
You know, I’ve never understood why there are no warning labels on the bottles of the stuff.
Now do bowel cancer as that’s exploding too.
We have so much toxic crap in every part of the world now…
We (the richest and most moral of us) have really made the plastics index hit amazing new highs. What a success!
Bowel cancer is only a problem in the US under 50. It’s the shit you eat you call food. Same with prostate cancer, rare disease outside the US.
correlation doesnt equal causation. CANCER cell in general have higher metabolic energy requirements, so they intake more(pump) in the surrouding environment to fuel thier uncontrolled cell division, so naturally microplastics on the outside of the cell would be pumped into the cell along with nutrients it stealing at higher than normal tissue to fuel its growth.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12505851/ (October, 2025)
Microplastics as emerging carcinogens: from environmental pollutants to oncogenic drivers
ABSTRACT: The widespread environmental pollution of microplastics (MPs) and nanoplastics (NPs) has become a major public health issue, with increasing evidence associating their bioaccumulation with cancer onset. This review offers a thorough examination of the etiological contributions of MPs/NPs in carcinogenesis, clarifying their mechanistic roles in in vitro, in vivo, and patient-derived evidences. Relevant studies were systematically identified and screened following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines to ensure methodological transparency and quality. We highlighted recent discoveries that emphasize the varied accumulation of MPs in several human cancer tissues, including lung, colorectal, gastric, cervical, breast, pancreatic, prostate and penile malignancies. These particles induce harmful biological effects by chronic inflammation, oxidative stress, genotoxicity, disturbance of lipid metabolism, and alteration of the tumor immunological microenvironment. Significantly, MPs/NPs disrupt various oncogenic signaling pathways, particularly NF-κB, PI3K/Akt/mTOR, Wnt/β-catenin, and p53, therefore facilitating tumor initiation, development, and metastasis. In vitro and in vivo studies have corroborated the carcinogenic potential of MPs/NPs, illustrating their capacity to cause cellular transformation, augment metastatic characteristics, and modify drug resistance pathways in cancer cells. Furthermore, the detection of MPs in human biological matrices, including blood, placenta, and tumor tissues, highlights direct human exposure and potential systemic effects. This review emphasizes the mechanistic insights with therapeutic significance, addressing current knowledge gaps in the field. Future research must prioritize biomarker identification, patient-centered investigations, therapeutic targeting, and the formulation of regulatory policies to alleviate the health hazards linked to microplastic exposure. Understanding the intricate relationship between MPs/NPs and cancer biology could facilitate the development of novel cancer prevention and management strategies related to environmental contamination.
Biased review written out of regional universities in India. These places crank out AI slop every week. All implications, no mechanism.
Tbh this comment sounds like biased AI slop. Especially when they detail the mechanisms literally in the abstract.
Everyone take note their Genetic Fallacy.
I agree with you, but with the carcinogenic nature of aryl compounds used in, and as by-products of, the polymerization and hardening/softening of plastics, the incidence of plastics in cells could in turn turn them cancerous, and thus increase the rate at which they draw nutrients and microplastics from the vascular system.
One may not necessarily cause the other, but they are overwhelmingly correlated - beyond the point of suspicion.
It would be interesting to see a study comparing other types of cancers, their microplastic levels, and the microplastic levels of other cells in progressively radiating distances from the cancerous cells.
Lymph nodes with cancer also contain dust and plant fibers. Mouse studies use stupid amounts of select plastic injected into susceptible strains.
This is junk until we see mechanism. Remember the BPA will give you tits scare? Shit science.
Wouldnt it be smarter to test for cancer risk with microplastics in blood as the explaining variable.
Because all that gives you is saying “wow Theres a tumor, and it contains microplastics”.
It’s no different than seeing amyloid plaques in brains with dementia and concluding they caused the dementia. That story has been going on for 30 years supported entirely by fraudulent manuscripts because it has to be true.
We have been implanting plastics in medicine with stents, prosthetics etc for 75 years. No one ever saw tumors at those implanted sites.
I dont know how one would reasonably test for a specific ‘risk’ of cancer from plastics considering the plethora of plastic and non-plastic causes of cancer as variables (both chemical and physical). One would have to go further and define specifically which mechanism(s) we’re talking about (Microplastic? Nanoplastics? Macroplastics? Physical contact/cellular damage from plastics? Amount of cancerous chemicals leeching out of the microplastics that entered the cell passively (considering theoretically it only takes a single molecule of a cancerous substance, to damage a specific oncogene whose reparation was simply overlooked by cellular gene repair chanisms thus causing cancer))? Do we differentiate between cancers caused by different plasticizers leeching out of different materials? And at what rate?)
As infinitely reductive as the thought experiment may be, ultimately, it’s almost unnecessary when you consider that any size of microplastics leeching any amount of carcinogenic chemicals inside cells is too much, and should be treated with as much disdain as drinking from leaded pipes.
More specifically, given the ubiquity of plastics in all humans, good luck finding a control group.
