by If you’re eating protein, you could be ingesting hundreds of tiny pieces of plastic every year, according to research.
A new study by researchers with the non-profit Ocean Conservancy and the University of Toronto found microplastics – tiny particles ranging from one micrometer (thousandth of a millimeter) to half a centimeter in size – in nearly 90 percent of the protein food samples tested.
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The researchers analyzed more than a dozen different types of common proteins that could end up on the average American plate, including seafood, pork, beef, chicken, tofu and several other plant-based meat options. They estimated that the average American adult could consume 11,000 pieces of microplastic per year, according to the study published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Pollution.
“There is no way to hide from plastics if you are eating,” said George Leonard, one of the authors of the study and chief scientist at Ocean Conservation. “If your desire is like, ‘I want to pick something that has no plastic in it,’ you really can’t.”
The study’s findings provide further evidence of the ubiquity of tiny plastic particles – found everywhere from Antarctic snow to the human body – and how they can end up in the food we eat and the water we drink, said Leonard. Research has documented microplastics in fruit and vegetables as well as other food products such as salt, sugar, rice and milk.
“People should not panic about the concentration of plastics in their food, with the caveat ‘yet’,” he said. “We need to do a lot more science.”
The potential effects of microplastics on human health are still being understood. A recent report by the World Health Organization detailed the potential health risks of microplastic pollution, including exposure to nanoplastics, even smaller particles measuring less than one micrometer. But the WHO noted that there is still not enough research linking these particles to adverse health effects in humans and emphasized the urgent need for more research.
“While we still have no idea what the human health consequences of this are, if any, we need to take this seriously because this is a problem that is not going away on its own, and it’s just go. to get worse the more plastic we use and throw away,” said Leonard.
It has long been known that microplastics can be found in the digestive tracts of fish and shellfish, but the new research shows the likely presence of plastic pieces in commonly eaten parts of seafood, such as fish fillets, as well as popular ones. land-based proteins such as beef, chicken and pork.
The researchers also noted that some highly processed protein products, such as breaded shrimp, fish sticks and chicken nuggets, appeared to have “significantly more” microplastic particles per gram than some more finely processed samples , including packaged wild Alaskan mango and raw chicken breast. This suggests that food processing may be a source of contamination, the study authors wrote.
But Leonard and other experts cautioned against using the findings to draw definitive conclusions about how microplastics can contaminate food and how much plastic might be in proteins.
The study’s sample size was limited and the researchers noted a high variation in the concentration of microplastics in the samples. The researchers also only counted microplastic particles greater than or equal to 45 micrometres.
“It just shows that we need to do more research,” said Bianca Datta, a dietitian and manager of scientific partnerships at the Good Food Institute, a non-profit that promotes meat alternatives. Datta, who was not involved in the new research, said more studies are needed to better understand how the source of protein may affect the amount of microplastic contamination as well as the potential effects of food processing.
The reality that microplastics are being found in many common food sources should also spur efforts to address the plastic pollution problem, experts said.
Microplastics will continue to be found everywhere as long as people continue to use plastics designed to be disposable, said Paul Anastas, director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale University, who was not part of the study. most recent.
“We’ve designed these materials to last for centuries, if not thousands of years, so that should be considered a design flaw,” Anastas said. “We know how to design polymers that degrade environmentally friendly, not into smaller and smaller particles.”
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