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It makes sense.
Not only is it easier to look in someone balls than someone’s brain, the fact that it can cross the blood brain barrier is pretty fucking crazy.
It’s not like someone said “we gotta find out if this can get inside testicles stat!” It’s that between cancer and fertility issues balls are looked at pretty frequently, and we found micro plastics there.
The reason we found it in the brain. Is someone asked if it was possible and that’s a big enough deal to go out and look.
It’s much easier to get tissue from testicles than a brain sample. About 10,000 men develop testicular cancer annually in the US. Plenty of test can still be ran on those testicles if the patient consents. Getting a aample of brain tissue usually requires the donor to be dead, and there is a long list of scientists that would loke to stidy brain matter for one reason or another.
Loke To Stidy is my new band name.
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I guess that’s the burning I smell when I think too hard.
The balls or the brain ones?
Yes.
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those came from the ocean
(also everywhere else)
Why do we find microplastics in humans but not other common substances (e.g. steel, wool, etc.)? I’m not too familiar with why this is happening
Any foreign objects made up of substance that are non-reactive can end up embedded in our bodies. Most obviously, there are medical devices that might permanently be left there: screws, prosthetics, artificial meshes and valves and membranes, etc. There are also some foreign objects that come from trauma, like shrapnel. Even tattoos are foreign pigments placed in a particular layer of skin that the body doesn’t have a mechanism for clearing out.
But generally speaking, if our body doesn’t have the enzymes to break down a substance into constituent compounds small enough to transport out, or if that foreign substance sits in a place where our body doesn’t have a mechanism to actually get to, it stays in the body.
The reason why we’re talking about microplastics, though, is that these compounds might actually be more reactive than previously assumed. If the plastics don’t break down at all, then there’s no chemical reaction byproducts to worry about. But if they break down very slowly, and the products of those reactions interfere with our biological processes in those tiny quantities, then we have a problem.
Because Steel and Wool degrade into their chemical components by chemical reactions (like oxidation or mold). Plastic wont, it gets smaller and smaller but it stays plastic. So Steel and Wool “skip” being really small, they become other chemicals nature can work with.
(this might be wrong, pls correct if so)
Specifically steel and wool are manufactured to be what they are. The process probably involves a step to remove micro plastics.
Your reply makes no sense to me.
It’s like that because of the way that it is.
Steel is made by heating up iron and carbon at temperatures where all kinds of plastics would sublimate into gas.
I think he meant the other way, why we humans wont have steel or wool in us
So those chunks of plastic were in a brain, eh? See that’s what happens when you grind LEGO in a blender and then snort rails of it.
no, in the ocean.
Even now, regular meghan is still thinking about plastic and balls. Nonstop. I’d think that’d be exhausting.
Real talk: the balls are kinda important because it’s where the sperm is produced. If that is polluted, it may lead to birth defects or infertility.
Not to mention there’s a huge number of humans that don’t use the other organ we’re discussing.
There are macro plastics in my sack
“I can’t stop thinking about…” is such a tired trope in posts. I never have believed it a single time.
“…I never have believed it a single time” is such a tired tripe in comments. I can’t stop thinking about it.
This is in some way clever. So much so I’ll die obsessed with it
When your victim complex is so strong that you have to invent new microaggressions to continue feeling persecuted instead of thinking logically for 5 seconds.
Sir and/or Ma’am, this is an article about micro plastics. Please keep moving along
