« Reply #4 on: January 18, 2026, 01:13:36 PM »
A New Study Suggests That the Hysteria Over 'Microplastics' May Be Overblownhttps://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2026/01/18/a-new-study-suggests-that-the-hysteria-over-microplastics-may-be-overblown-n4948438One of the side issues raised by all this plastic waste is human ingestion of "microplastics." These are "synthetic solid particles or polymeric matrices, with regular or irregular shape and with size ranging from 1 μm [micron] to 5 mm, of either primary or secondary manufacturing origin, which are insoluble in water," according to the European science journal Springer Nature.
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Are they a huge problem? They certainly are ubiquitous. As of 2026, the scientific consensus suggests that the average adult ingests between 74,000 and 121,000 microplastic particles every year from food and water alone. If you include the particles we inhale from the air, that number can rise to over 211,000 particles annually.
What does that mean for our health? Ingesting that many microplastic particles could be linked to cancer, heart attacks, reproductive problems, and a host of other harms.
Or perhaps not.
The field of study is relatively new and has become "the next big thing" in science. That's not necessarily bad. It's a subject that, if not ignored, was certainly understudied for decades. It has also become the cause du jour of the environmental movement, with all the political baggage that entails.
Studies claiming to have revealed micro and nanoplastics in the brain, testes, placentas, arteries and elsewhere were reported by media across the world, including the Guardian. There is no doubt that plastic pollution of the natural world is ubiquitous, and present in the food and drink we consume and the air we breathe. But the health damage potentially caused by microplastics and the chemicals they contain is unclear, and an explosion of research has taken off in this area in recent years.
However, micro- and nanoplastic particles are tiny and at the limit of today’s analytical techniques, especially in human tissue. There is no suggestion of malpractice, but researchers told the Guardian of their concern that the race to publish results, in some cases by groups with limited analytical expertise, has led to rushed results and routine scientific checks sometimes being overlooked.
The Guardian has identified seven studies that have been challenged by researchers publishing criticism in the respective journals, while a recent analysis listed 18 studies that it said had not considered that some human tissue can produce measurements easily confused with the signal given by common plastics.
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Whose Shampeachment Is It Anyway, where the high crimes are made up, and the evidence doesn't matter
