I can feel it in my gut…literally.

November 20, 2018

If you’re keeping an eye on plastic at the moment (who isn’t!?), you’ll probably have seen some of the articles about a new study proving that humans are EATING plastic. 

Given that mass use of plastic has been part of the western world for the past 70 years and that most processed food is wrapped in the stuff, it’s not surprising.

But is it a health problem?

The truth is that we don’t know. Yet.

But, if we think about it logically, we are probably right to be concerned.

Given that we’ve been around for a few hundred thousand years, and plastic has only existed for the last 70, it’s fairly reasonable conclude that we probably have not yet evolved to ingest plastic!

But here’s the thing: for me, the scientific studies haven’t gone far enough yet, so we don’t know as much as we’d like about the whole subject.

The studies that have been done so far have only looked at 8 people, from 7 different European countries, which leaves a lot of questions unanswered:

• Is it the same problem everywhere? The USA, Asia, Africa, developed and developing countries?
• How is the plastic getting into our bodies? From food packaging?  From drink packaging?  From food itself?
• Does the plastic come from further down the food-chain? Fish?
• What is the impact on human health when plastic is ingested?

The study is a good start, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. 

We’ve all seen the pictures of sea creatures with their bellies full of plastic, and it’s pretty obvious that that is a “bad thing”. 

But we’re humans, and we won’t be eating cotton buds or bottle tops any time soon -  so what are the impacts of micro plastics on OUR health?

My “gut feeling” is that when we know, we’ll be in even more of a hurry to eradicate plastic!

 

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Also in Do The Right Thing