Q: Greetings Ask Us Guy
A new study indicates that a significant amount of our microplastic and nanoplastic intake comes from bottled water. Alas, the former city manager appears to have been ahead of the curve when he banned bottled water from City Hall.
I’m curious: Does the filtration system at the Water Treatment Plant filter out nanoparticles less than 200nm?
Is the high concentration of nanoparticles in human brains what’s responsible for the phenomenon of the patients running the asylum?
Have a great week!
A: Ask Us Guy is going to take a pass on the second question because the reader did not specify which asylum or which inmates he was referring to.
But a little levity was maybe understandable considering how utterly unfunny the whole microplastics problem is. The first study referenced by the reader was published in March and advised, among other things, that people drink tap water rather than bottled water and avoid heating up foods in plastic containers.
That study followed one published in February in Nature Medicine that was led by University of New Mexico toxicologist Matthew Campen and found a shocking number of tiny plastic particles in the brains of cadavers. The cumulative amount was the equivalent in weight of a standard plastic spoon — handle and all.
“Worse, the plastic accumulation (in human brains) appears to be growing over time, having increased by 50% over just the past eight years,” according to a summary of Campen’s work published by the University of New Mexico.
Perhaps not surprisingly, having the equivalent of a plastic spoon in your brain — even if the plastic is distributed in countless tiny pieces across the brain tissue — might not be conducive to clear thinking.
The scientists found that microplastic concentrations were three to five times higher in the cadaver brains of people who had previously been diagnosed with dementia compared to cadaver brains from individuals who hadn’t received that diagnosis. Campen cautioned that the study didn’t prove causation between higher amounts of plastic in a brain and dementia, only correlation, but conceded it was troublesome.
For readers who don’t pay close attention to environmental issues, there are a number of sources of microplastics, which are found in water, food and even air. But a major source of the tiny chunks of plastic is big chunks of plastic. Everyone knows a plastic shopping bag or other plastic item left in the environment is much more persistent than a piece of wood or other organic matter, but the plastic does disintegrate eventually.
That doesn’t mean the plastic is disappearing, however. It’s just dividing into ever-smaller pieces that eventually become too tiny to see with the naked eye.
“Plastic never goes away — it just breaks down into finer and finer particles,” said Dr. Desiree LaBeaud in a recent blogpost by Stanford University’s medical school.
“All of us need to stop using plastic as much as we can to protect our health, especially single-use plastics,” said LaBeaud, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at Stanford Medicine and co-founder of the university’s interdisciplinary Plastics and Health Working Group.
Research on how microplastics impact health is in its early stages, according to the Stanford blogpost, but previous studies have found the particles in organs beyond the brain, including “testicles, heart, stomach, lymph nodes and placenta. They’ve also been detected in urine, breastmilk, semen and meconium, which is a newborn’s first stool.”
“We’re born pre-polluted,” LaBeaud said.
So, on to the questions about whether the local water treatment plant is capable of removing microplastics. Kyle Hinrichs, Mankato water treatment plant superintendent, said there has been no comprehensive testing for microplastics in the water drawn from city wells or in the water being distributed to homes and businesses after treatment.
But Hinrichs said there is some indication that an ultrafiltration system, which is the technique used at Mankato’s plant adjacent to Sibley Park, may be getting the job done.
“Microplastic measurement is still in early stages, but studies suggest that a UF system is effective in microplastics removal,” he said. “There has been no study of the raw versus finished water in Mankato.”
The city’s website describes the UF system this way: “Ultrafiltration membranes are so tight they are capable of blocking the smallest and most difficult microorganisms for safety. Daily testing of Mankato’s water confirms water quality is well ahead of federal water safety standards. Much more effective than sand filters, ultrafiltration also has a smaller footprint.”
At this time, there are no governmental regulations requiring microplastics to be kept below a certain level in American drinking water, said Amy Barrett, a spokesperson for the Minnesota Department of Health.
“We don’t have state or federal standards for microplastics in drinking water, most likely because there does not yet appear to be consensus about their health effects,” Barrett said. “There is a microplastics project underway that was directed by the Legislature, and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is the lead on the project.”
For those interested in learning more about microplastics, Barrett suggested an educational resource produced by the the Interstate Technology Regulatory Council, which can be found at mp-1.itrcweb.org/.
Campen, the University of New Mexico scientist, said he hopes the cadaver study might motivate consumers — who have a tendency to ignore threats they can’t directly see — to think more about the environmental impacts of microplastics.
“I have yet to encounter a single human being who says, ‘There’s a bunch of plastic in my brain and I’m totally cool with that,’” he said. “I certainly don’t feel comfortable with this much plastic in my brain, and I don’t need to wait around 30 more years to find out what happens if the concentrations quadruple.”
Contact Ask Us at The Free Press, 418 S. Second St., Mankato, MN 56001. Call Mark Fischenich at 344-6321 or email your question to mfischenich@mankatofreepress.com; put Ask Us in the subject line.