Yup, you’re probably shitting plastic.
You have almost certainly heard by now about the global scourge of plastic pollution. The internet is awash in sad images of birds jam-packed with lighters, sea turtles with intestines full of plastic, and whales that starved to death because their guts were filled with plastic bags. You’ve also heard of microplastics, which are basically everywhere. They’re in our water, in our food, and according to a recent study, they’re in our shit. Which, if one thinks about it, only makes sense since we’re eating and drinking them.
The NOAA defines microplastic as a piece of plastic that is less than five millimeters in length. It comes from a variety of sources, like bigger pieces of plastic degrading over time or those little things in your toothpaste that make your teeth feel clean or that tub of exfoliating lotion you have. They’re too small to clog up your drains, too small to really notice, and they last for hundreds of years, so there are a LOT of microplastics floating around out there—and not just in the ocean. Microplastics in soil may be a far greater problem. Norwegian research estimates that in Europe and North America, between 110,000 and 730,000 tons of microplastic are transferred to agricultural soils each year.
The results of the study were presented in October at the 26th UEG Week in Vienna. UEG Week is a weird sort of party for gastroenterologists held each year to “provide services for all healthcare professionals and researchers, in the broad area of digestive health.”
The study was done by researchers from the Medical University of Vienna and the Environment Agency Austria. They dug through the poop of a group of participants from countries around the globe, including Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the UK, and Austria. Every single batch of crap they picked apart tested positive for microplastics.
Now, eight people isn’t a very big study. This time around, it’s merely a pilot study, which means that it’s just a precursor to a larger one. Still, the fact that all eight people from eight different countries had plastic in their guts is telling.
The study’s participants wrote down everything they ate for the week before the stool samples. None of them were vegetarian, all of them ate food that was wrapped in plastic or drank from plastic containers, and they all ate at least one kind of fish from the ocean.
It’s not really known exactly how bad microplastics are for us, but it seems like a reasonable assumption that they are not good. Scientists think that they might “affect the tolerance and immune response of the gut by bioaccumulation or aiding transmission of toxic chemicals and pathogens.”
“This is the first study of its kind and confirms what we have long suspected: that plastics ultimately reach the human gut,” said Dr. Philipp Schwabl, the lead researcher in the study. “Of particular concern is what this means to us, and especially patients with gastrointestinal diseases. While the highest plastic concentrations in animal studies have been found in the gut, the smallest microplastic particles are capable of entering the bloodstream, lymphatic system and may even reach the liver. Now that we have the first evidence of microplastics inside humans, we need further research to understand what this means for human health.”
