• TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    “I can’t stop thinking about…” is such a tired trope in posts. I never have believed it a single time.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    It makes sense.

    Not only is it easier to look in someone balls than someone’s brain, the fact that it can cross the blood brain barrier is pretty fucking crazy.

    It’s not like someone said “we gotta find out if this can get inside testicles stat!” It’s that between cancer and fertility issues balls are looked at pretty frequently, and we found micro plastics there.

    The reason we found it in the brain. Is someone asked if it was possible and that’s a big enough deal to go out and look.

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    So those chunks of plastic were in a brain, eh? See that’s what happens when you grind LEGO in a blender and then snort rails of it.

  • wafflez@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Do microplastics actually look like those in the picture? I always thought they were so small we couldnt see them

  • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    When your victim complex is so strong that you have to invent new microaggressions to continue feeling persecuted instead of thinking logically for 5 seconds.

  • Aurelius@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Why do we find microplastics in humans but not other common substances (e.g. steel, wool, etc.)? I’m not too familiar with why this is happening

    • booly@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Any foreign objects made up of substance that are non-reactive can end up embedded in our bodies. Most obviously, there are medical devices that might permanently be left there: screws, prosthetics, artificial meshes and valves and membranes, etc. There are also some foreign objects that come from trauma, like shrapnel. Even tattoos are foreign pigments placed in a particular layer of skin that the body doesn’t have a mechanism for clearing out.

      But generally speaking, if our body doesn’t have the enzymes to break down a substance into constituent compounds small enough to transport out, or if that foreign substance sits in a place where our body doesn’t have a mechanism to actually get to, it stays in the body.

      The reason why we’re talking about microplastics, though, is that these compounds might actually be more reactive than previously assumed. If the plastics don’t break down at all, then there’s no chemical reaction byproducts to worry about. But if they break down very slowly, and the products of those reactions interfere with our biological processes in those tiny quantities, then we have a problem.

    • NickwithaC@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 months ago

      Specifically steel and wool are manufactured to be what they are. The process probably involves a step to remove micro plastics.

    • PixeIOrange@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Because Steel and Wool degrade into their chemical components by chemical reactions (like oxidation or mold). Plastic wont, it gets smaller and smaller but it stays plastic. So Steel and Wool “skip” being really small, they become other chemicals nature can work with.

      (this might be wrong, pls correct if so)