Are microplastics from car tyres contributing to heart disease?

"Add one more likely culprit to the long list of known cardiovascular risk factors including red meat, butter, smoking and stress: microplastics.

“In a study released Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, an international team of physicians and researchers showed that surgical patients who had a build-up of micro and nanoplastics in their arterial plaque had a 2.1 times greater risk of nonfatal heart attack, nonfatal stroke or death from any cause in the three years post surgery than those who did not.”

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-03-07/microplastics-may-be-risk-factor-for-cardiovascular-disease

The research is particularly noteworthy, given that one of the biggest sources of microplastic pollution is the synthetic rubber in car tyres: https://aus.social/@ajsadauskas/112015017609398126

So it’s not just the sedentary lifestyles that car-dependent planning encourages that’s causing health issues.

And it’s not just exhaust fumes either.

There’s also the health impacts of microplastics, including from car tyres.

Worth noting as well that internal documents from the big oil companies show that they knew since the 1970s that recycling wasn’t going to solve the problem of plastic pollution. They promoted it anyway: https://aus.social/@ajsadauskas/112064312364853769

#tyres #tyre #car #microplastic #microplastics #pollution #environment @fuck_cars #fuckcars

  • NotBillMurray@lemmy.world
    0·
    9 months ago

    Probably to a degree, but seeing as we store almost all our food and beverages in plastic I feel like they’re the more significant cause.

    • NarrativeBear@lemmy.world
      0·
      9 months ago

      This is also a contributing factor, and all these things really play a role in affecting our overall health and wellbeing as a whole. Each issue should be equally reviewed and solutions proposed. What we should not do is play one issue against another as “more bad”, but instead tackle each problem with the same amount of enthusiasm and energy.

      That being said plastics, specific plastic garbage is a large issue, especially when that garbage becomes littered on our streets.

      Have you all noticed how if you look around your towns it has started to feel more dirty and unclean in the last 15-20 years. Walking down a trail you may find if you start collecting litter you may end up with three or four garbage bags full, and not even feel like you made a significant dent in the area.

      It does not help most of our garbage and litter has become significantly non-degradable so it essentially can stick around for generations.

      Imagine if everyone that went out for a picnic with today’s wrappers and packaging and did the following as shown in this video link below.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roREnVhd_og

    • PowerCrazy@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      9 months ago

      Plastic is bad, but if you are talking about microplastics, plastic items that’s aren’t “wear items” are not a significant source of them.

        • PowerCrazy@lemmy.mlEnglish
          0·
          9 months ago

          I should have clarified, they aren’t a significant source of microplastics until disposal, since plastic disposal is a fiction. I.e. If you have a plastic water bottle and you drink the water, you aren’t going to get any significant micro-plastic just because the water was stored in plastic. Same with PVC piping for water, or whatever. However if you have a road near a body of water, you will get a very significant amount of microplastics buildup in that water that is much greater then from water stored in a bottle. In the long term, all plastic becomes micro-plastic and gets everywhere, but wear items are absolutely the leading cause in both volume and the cause of increasing microplastics around the world.

          • fiercekitten@lemm.eeEnglish
            0·
            9 months ago

            I.e. If you have a plastic water bottle and you drink the water, you aren’t going to get any significant micro-plastic just because the water was stored in plastic. Same with PVC piping for water, or whatever.

            Are you sure about that? I’m asking because I recently saw a story where they measured microplastics in a beverage from a plastic water bottle and found that it was a lot higher than previously thought, but I don’t remember reading how harmful it is.

          • CurtAdams@urbanists.social
            0·
            9 months ago

            @PowerCrazy Actually plastic water bottles leave water they contain LOADED with microplastics:

            https://www.npr.org/2024/01/10/1223730333/bottled-water-plastic-microplastic-nanoplastic-study

            It’s not out of the question that the significant health risks we’re finding for ultraprocessed food are partly, or even mostly, from microplastics introduced in processing or storage.

            Wear makes microplastic issues much worse, yes, but plastic is turning out to be quite bad enough even new.