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.”
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
Legit asking:
Up until relatively recently, the layman’s understanding of pollution was mostly focused on exhaust.
What caused the general shift in focus to microplastics, and by direct extension tire ware?
Awareness mostly. The general public didn’t really know anything about micro plastics until like 2023.
We developed methods to reliably detect them about a decade ago, and then we started searching for them and found them everywhere, and now we’re evaluating their effects which are negative. So we’re finally at the point where there’s enough information for the reporters to push the story. There were many of articles over past years explaining how we’re finding them everywhere, but it was hard to sell the story when the effects were entirely unknown. Now we’re starting to figure them out and people seem to agree that it is attention-worthy. This is still probably the tip of the iceberg, though, imo.
Electric cars. We have a solution to the exhaust problem now, but none of the other issues are solved so they are being more heavily emphasised, and with electric cars being touted as an environmental solution it’s more important to point out the issues that they don’t solve and that we need to go further.
Okay, thanks! That was super informative!