The real microplastics problem isn't in your brain

In the realm of horror, it was hard to beat the headlines last February that you were carrying around the equivalent of a plastic spoon's worth of microplastics in your brain.

- FD Flam, Tribune News Service

The findings, reported in Nature Medicine, generated lots of outrage on morning talk shows and were even repeated as fact by would-be surgeon general Casey Means. A number of chemists were initially skeptical of the study, which was based on analysing brains from a small sample of cadavers. In a rebuttal published last month in Nature, a group of chemists argued that the technique used couldn't accurately distinguish fat particles that are a normal part of the brain from microplastics, and that the study didn’t include the necessary validation steps to ensure they weren't simply seeing postmortem contamination or otherwise misleading themselves.

When I wrote to chemist Fazel Monikh at the University of Padua in Italy, an author of the rebuttal, he responded that the initial claim was extraordinary because, “such particle loads would cause catastrophic occlusion, inflammation, and tissue destruction incompatible with life.” And the analysis didn’t constitute extraordinary evidence — or even reasonably good evidence. That’s not to say the prolif-

eration of tiny plastic particles isn’t a serious problem. A review paper published last month lists ways microplastic particles might damage your brain and increase the risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson's diseases, However, it also lost credibility by citing the plastic-spoon claim without caveats.