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The real microplastics problem isn’t in your brain
Shock tactics like warnings about a spoon’s worth of the stuff in brain tissue do more harm than good.
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The proliferation of tiny plastic particles is a serious environmental and health issue. But shock attention-grabbing tactics can backfire.
PHOTO: SEA EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
F.D. Flam
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In the realm of horror, it was hard to beat the headlines in February that you were carrying around the equivalent of a plastic spoon’s worth of microplastics in your brain. The findings, reported in Nature Medicine, generated lots of outrage on morning talk shows and were even repeated as fact by would-be surgeon general Casey Means.
A number of chemists were initially sceptical of the study, which was based on analysing brains from a small sample of cadavers.
