Land they found in the placenta and breast milk, liver and lungs. Now microplastics and nanoplastics, microscopic “balls” of materials omnipresent in our lives such as polyethylene or PVC, have also been discovered in atherosclerotic plaques of the arteries.
And these plaques stuffed with plastic, according to data published this week on New England Journal of Medicine by researchers from the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, they are more dangerous than the others because they are more inflamed and therefore “crumbly”at risk of detaching and form thrombi.
The real damage of microplastics
It is the first time that research has identified one in humans correlation between micro and nanoplastics present in the body and damage to health. The coordinator of the study, Giuseppe Paolisso, says: «The analysis detected polyethylene in 58 percent of the plaques and PVC particles in 12.5 percent of the cases; we followed the participants for 34 months and discovered that these “pollution” plaques increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes by 4.5 times.”
Micro- and nanoplastics can generate plaques in the arteries. (SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY)
Polyethylene makes up 40 percent of global plastic production and is used to make containers, objects and coverings; PVC is equally widespread and present from films to coverings. Polyethylene and PVC release particles that can penetrate deeplyespecially the smaller ones.
«Attributing the source of those detected in atherosclerotic plaques is almost impossible, but micro- and nanoplastics could be an important new cardiovascular risk factor to consider».
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