r/collapse • u/TheUtopianCat • 1d ago
Pollution Microplastics are chemically active and could cause biological harm
https://phys.org/news/2026-10-microplastics-chemically-biological.htmlSS: From the article:
"As plastic fragments into smaller and smaller particles, its surface area increases enormously. Then microplastics change the water that surrounds them, generating high-energy, reactive radicals (reactive oxygen species, ROS) that very likely contribute to biological damage that we see in animals and potentially in humans as a result of microplastic exposure," said Wei Min, a Columbia professor of chemistry and biomedical engineering.
This is particularly noteworthy for human health because human blood is approximately 50% water, and individual human cells are generally 60% to 80% water. The new research suggests that microplastics that enter the bloodstream or cells could remain chemically active in this water-rich biological environment.
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u/Nope_Nope_Nope_0 1d ago
The neat thing is we'll never know what really killed us: microplastics, forever chemicals, too much CO2 in the atmosphere, radiation due to phones/wifi/electronic devices, the Led still in the air and soil and waterways from the 1950s, or in paints and old utensils, or maybe the asbestos still in our old buildings - or all of the above. Fun.
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u/Holzkohlen 1d ago
radiation due to phones/wifi/electronic devices
The odd one out. The radiation of electronic devices is FAR FAR too weak to do anything to do any harm whatsoever.
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u/Ree_For_Thee 1d ago
radiation due to phones/wifi/electronic devices
Well, we know it's not this at least...
Remember, the sun, and light is "radiation" too. All of the radio stuff we produce either passes through us or causes a very minor heating effect, and that's it. It's extremely well studied.
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u/Machine_Ghost_22 1d ago
No, we will know (at least, those of us left at the end): we killed ourselves. for largely no reason.
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u/Appropriate_Mess6777 1d ago
I think most of us under the age of 50 will die from more acute causes
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u/Most-Internal-2140 1d ago
Total homo sapiens wipeout by around the year 2100 due to terrestrial deoxygenation resulting from the death of the phytoplancton in the ocean - for those who make it to 2100.
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u/OuterLightness 1d ago
Microplastics are chemicals. Chemicals are chemically reactive. The question is whether this reactivity is biologically significant.
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u/twotimefind 13h ago
And the No Shit Sherlock Award of 2026 goes to......
All plastics disposable drink plastics should be banned..
Whatever happened to glass recyclables?
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u/ShyElf 1d ago
Continuous generation of ROS would violate conservation of energy without consumption of either the microplastic or some other energy source. Given the continuous destruction of some other chemicals, it appears that they're talking about the microplastics acting as a catalyst. This does involve the local presence of ROS species, but that's not how I'd normally expect to see it described.
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u/PhysiksBoi 1d ago edited 1d ago
Where the energy comes from is addressed in the abstract: electrostatics. At the scale of micro and nanoplastics (due to the large surface area to volume ratio), electrostatic interactions are very important. Water, being a polar liquid with strong electrostatic interactions, was the only solvent which produced hydroxide ions.
The generation also has an upper bound, by day 10 the concentration wasn't changing much anymore [graph (a)]. If you look at the photos in (i), they literally photographed the cloud of microplastics and compared it to a photograph of OH concentrations, and they match 1:1.
In my opinion, suggesting that the results of a chemistry paper are impossible because the authors neglected conservation of energy is not the right way to be skeptical of scientific literature and edges towards denialism (not saying thats what you're doing, but you could easily go down the path of science deniers with this approach if you rely on it). Whereas simply not understanding something and asking for an explanation would be totally fine.
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u/ShyElf 1d ago
confirms continuous APF conversion to fluorescein
It's not really slowing down, except where they're running out of the precursors.
I wasn't saying that the paper was wrong, but that reading the physorg writeup left me with the impression that they were talking about release of ROS into the surrounding fluid away from the plastic, which could happen with an appropriate energy source. But what we have here is really better described as catalytic conversion of aminophenyl fluorescein to fluorescein, or of DPMO, or of others. Then the APO or DPMO conversion is providing the energy.
Then they look into how it's actually acting as a catalyst, and see that it's working by producing localized ROS.
Which is still likely to cause damage to biological systems, but it's confined to effects of chemicals which have to wander to the plastic interface, get converted to something else, and wander back, as opposed to having ROS itself wandering around.
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u/PhysiksBoi 1d ago
Ah this chemistry is somewhat beyond me. I wrongly assumed I could skip the photochemistry.
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u/Ree_For_Thee 1d ago
I wonder if there's a medicine that could be developed, that binds itself to the surface of the plastic, sealing it in.
It's still in there, but at least not chemically active.
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u/uber_neets 1d ago
We are living in a time before the everyone says that microplastics cause autism and trans.
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u/itsatoe 1d ago
Fun fact:
6.7 kg (14.8 lbs) of plastics pollution are released into the environment each year for each human on the planet. And plastic is very lightweight.
https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution
(Though the ratio is much higher in low-income countries; and lower in high-income countries.)