A new study reveals that microplastics may be to blame for severe Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Coincidentally, after my previous IBS threads and the ensuing discussion of microplastics, a new study has been published that shows a link between microplastics and Irritable Bowl Disease (IBD).

Scientists from Nanjing University and Nanjing Medical University report in the journal Environmental Science & Technology that patients with a high percentage of microplastics in their stool were more likely to develop severe cases of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). They speculate that microplastics may have a role in the formation of IBD, or that IBD causes patients to retain microplastics in unusually high amounts.

The researchers determined that humans are exposed to potentially harmful plastics by interacting with dust particles and mistakenly swallowing plastic packaging on food, based on both a survey of IBD patients and the physical properties of microplastics discovered in stool samples.

Surprisingly, patients with IBD appeared to have higher levels of microplastics in their stools. The average microplastic concentration in patients with IBD's feces was 41.8 pieces of plastic per gram of dry matter, while the concentration in individuals without IBD's feces was only 28 pieces of plastic per gram of dry matter.

The researchers found that polyethylene terephthalate (which is used in food packaging, clothes, and engineering resins) and polyamide (which is found in cooking utensils, carpeting, and textiles) were the most frequent types of microplastics found in the patients' stool.

Analysis of Microplastics in Human Feces Reveals a Correlation between Fecal Microplastics and Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD, which includes both Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis) are two disorders that are frequently confused, but they are completely separate conditions. Despite the fact that their acronyms sound similar and may induce comparable symptoms, IBS and IBD are completely different illnesses with quite different disease trajectories. Furthermore, they are treated very differently, and the treatments prescribed for one will not be effective for the other.

a reply to: tamusan

Plastics have their place but we’ve taken it too far.

I remember when it all changed.

The year was 1984 and I remember going into Walmart and they were selling “plastic” shoes. Almost everything was made in the USA back then, or Hong Kong.
Those shoes were so incredibly cheap. What people don’t realize is that shoes used to be very expensive and very few people had dozens and dozens like they do now. So those shoes were the start. Then slowly EVERYTHING became plastic, kitchen goods, then household products. Pretty soon almost every single piece of clothing would be plastic. It is very rare to find pure cotton, or linen now. I know because I specifically look for it. Some things say cotton, but it is usually a mix. You can do burn tests to test it out.

The amount of people that eat on plastics is insane, especially hot food. No thanks!
I am a super smeller/taster, I can taste plastics. The worst, absolute worst are children products.

Even though these amounts of plastics may seem small, just think over a lifetime how much you are exposed to.

a reply to: JAGStorm

I suspect that we are all eating much more plastic than we realize. I remember reading a few articles about microplastics being found in seafood and vegetables. I thought that someone had made threads about it, but I am not seeing anything in a search. The plastics are being eaten by sea life and making their way to the animals' muscles. Vegetables are also taking plastics up through their roots. Both result in microplastics in our food itself. The prevalence of plastic products and packaging is a direct cause of this.

originally posted by: tamusan
a reply to: JAGStorm

I suspect that we are all eating much more plastic than we realize. I remember reading a few articles about microplastics being found in seafood and vegetables. I thought that someone had made threads about it, but I am not seeing anything in a search. The plastics are being eaten by sea life and making their way to the animals' muscles. Vegetables are also taking plastics up through their roots. Both result in microplastics in our food itself. The prevalence of plastic products and packaging is a direct cause of this.

Oh it’s in the water for sure. Seafood is not the same as it was before. There are things that I ate since childhood and they are no longer the same at all. I’m not talking farmed vs. fresh either.

a reply to: JAGStorm

Microwaved plastic. Yikes!

I read the research summary about maybe a week ago on a site. It is hard to get away from the microplastics in the environment though, they are everywhere now. They are in the great lakes, they say it may be from women's makeup that gets through the sewer system then into the rivers. But that is just one of the sources, I do not know how we are going to get rid of them anymore and they are a threat to the fish and animals too.

How did we get into this situation. When I was young I used to go to the dump to shoot rats with my dad and there was not much plastic in the dump back then. We had permission from the city to shoot those rats, we knew people in the city and they asked us to go shoot them so they did not infest the town. Back to the plastic in the dump, there were some plastic radios and stuff, and there was a limited amount of saran wrap and stuff like that, but most stores had butcher cases and they always wrapped the meat in butchers paper. The egg cartons were all cardboard, so were the milk cartons. Tupperware had plastics but they were meant to last a lifetime if you took care of them. The chip bags were foil I think and the candybars came in a foil and paper sheath. The grocery bags were all paper or you got boxes from shipping if you needed them. Now it has gone berserk, plastic fills the landfills and they do not recycle the plastic store bags here either, no plastic sandwich bags or glad bags get recycled. There is plastic siding on houses, I sit at a plastic computer desk, the finish on new furniture is urathane, not varnish, urathane has plastic qualities, if you have a fire on a urathane piece of furniture, it will kill the people in the house from the fumes without them even waking up and no fire in the room. I learned that from the fire department.

Even if we were to stop the plastic, it would haunt us in the environment for generations to come. I guess disrespecting nature goes a lot farther than carbon emissions.

We need to keep in mind plastic is a very inert substance, that's why we use it so much for packaging. I constantly drink out of plastic bottles and it has caused me zero problems. Over time everything eventually breaks down into micro-particles, not just plastic. There are plenty of other micro-particles which are much worse for us. I have seen very little evidence to suggest plastic micro-particles are dangerous to our health. Saying plastic micro-particles "may" cause IBD doesn't sound like a very confident conclusion to me.

The reason I'm being skeptical in regards to this study is because some people are looking for any excuse to ban plastic products these days, since most plastic comes from oil. It doesn't surprise me at all to see studies like this popping up at this point in time, I was expecting it in fact. I'm not totally against reducing plastic use, we use an absurd amount of plastic on some product packaging, which is why it annoys me when I see them banning things which actually benefit by being plastic, then claiming it's for the environment.

a reply to: tamusan

can you tell me how food packaging breaks down and affects the food that's packaged?

When I see food packaged in this way... there's no evidence of broken plastic or pieces of plastic that could of torn away from the packaging... its a solid piece of polyethylene... how can micro's from that piece break off without any evidence??

Maybe with Microwaved ready meals its possible, when you need to punch tiny holes in it to let the heat c ook the food properly?? Hopefully not though because I've had quite a few over the last 3 years!

a reply to: CrazeeWorld777

I'm guessing the scale of microplastics coming off packaging would be so miniscule you wouldn't be able to notice normally. A little bit like how your fingernails won't be scratching and marking everything they come into contact with but eventually there'll be a build up of dirt under them.

Stains in Tupperware are usually particles embedded in the plastic itself, most plastic bottles are not reusable due to a similar issue. You can test this with a coke bottle and food dye, the refilled bottle will absorb the food dye. People with good taste buds can usually taste the last product.

PET bottles are a reasonable choice but even they degrade with time. That's just bottles though, we use plastic in a lot of ways regarding food and much of this plastic is subject to harsh treatment it's reasonable to think plastics will degrade even if it's only on a microscopic level. Research keeps suggesting we consume a lot more than we think.

It's in the air... Plastic and their chemical signatures are everywhere. I think microwaved plastic is relatively safe though, only water molecules are affected so I'm theory plastic is unaffected. It still absorbs heat from food/liquids though. I'm sure there's potential to lose some carbon atoms along that process.

a reply to: rickymouse

But plastics won WWII !

Maybe an exaggeration although the heavy use of plastics did coincide with that war, I grew up in the 90's in the UK and that seemed to be the time when the last of the butcher's paper and glass soda pop bottles was used. This was also the time when small businesses died and supermarkets thrived. Sweets were made by Mars® soda was bottled by Coca-Cola® and crisps bagged by Walkers®

No surprise to me they used the cheapest packaging they could whilst winning the capitalist game, there's a revival of better packaging around the corner but I agree that it's a little too late for the future generations.

Money talks doesn't it? Products encased in plastic are usually a lot cheaper than ones in glass or paper. Even my butcher wraps in plastic for convenient freezing and better storage life.

I think a lot of this is because they line things like cans with plastic. Think about how many with IBS drink beer. Then realize the can drinkers are drinking out of the cheapest plastic imaginable the entire time. That could easily be 20 crap cheap plastic containers a week.

originally posted by: RAY1990
a reply to: rickymouse

But plastics won WWII !

Maybe an exaggeration although the heavy use of plastics did coincide with that war, I grew up in the 90's in the UK and that seemed to be the time when the last of the butcher's paper and glass soda pop bottles was used. This was also the time when small businesses died and supermarkets thrived. Sweets were made by Mars® soda was bottled by Coca-Cola® and crisps bagged by Walkers®

No surprise to me they used the cheapest packaging they could whilst winning the capitalist game, there's a revival of better packaging around the corner but I agree that it's a little too late for the future generations.

Money talks doesn't it? Products encased in plastic are usually a lot cheaper than ones in glass or paper. Even my butcher wraps in plastic for convenient freezing and better storage life.

We get a half a cow every year and we do get the meat double wrapped in paper. But what is the lining on the paper made of these days? It is easier to stack in our freezer than when it is in vaccum sealed plastic bags that slide all over the freezer and fall out the door. The hamburger does still come in the plastic wrapped tubes, one and a half pounds each, but that is life, they do stack good in the freezer and you do not dig through them to choose the cut of meat that you want. I am not totally antiplastic, but the less exposure the better, our bodies can detox a little. We also get all of our milk in the old fashioned paper cartons, again I have no clue what the waterproofing is made of, but it is nostalgic. If the local farmer who bottles his own milk fifty miles away fed his cows a diet with some hay in it, I would buy his glass bottles of milk, but he does the one hundred percent grain diet and his cows live all their lives in stalls, they do not go out in fields at all. It is basically a milk factory.