We breathe, eat and drink tiny particles of plastic. A small study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine raises more questions than answers about how these bits — microplastics and smaller nanoplastics — might affect the heart. The Italian study has weaknesses, but it is likely to highlight the debate about the problem of plastic pollution.
“The study is interesting. But there are really significant limitations,” said Dr. Steve Nissen, a heart specialist at the Cleveland Clinic. “It’s a wake-up call that maybe we need to take the problem of microplastics more seriously. As a cause of heart disease? Not proven. As a potential cause? Yes, maybe.” The study involved 257 people who underwent surgery to clear blocked blood vessels in the neck.
Italian researchers analyzed fat deposits that surgeons removed from the carotid arteries that supply the brain with blood and oxygen. They followed these people for three years. During that time, 30 or 20 percent of people with plastic had a heart attack, stroke or died from any cause, compared with eight or about 8 percent of those who had no evidence of plastic.
Inflammation is the body’s response to injury and is thought to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. study, in an e-mail.
Patients with plastic surgery had more heart disease, diabetes and high cholesterol than patients without plastic surgery. They were mostly men and mostly smokers. The researchers tried to adjust for these risk factors during their statistical analysis, but they may have missed important differences between groups that could account for the results. The scientists had no information about what people consumed or breathed that might represent plastic.
The samples may have been contaminated in the laboratory. The researchers acknowledge this in their paper and suggest that future studies be conducted in clean rooms where the air is filtered for pollutants. That seems high, Nissen said.
And I just don’t think that’s right,” he said. More research is needed, said Dr. Philip Landrigan of Boston College. Other researchers have found plastic pieces in the lungs, liver, blood, placenta and breast milk. “It doesn’t prove cause and effect, but it suggests cause and effect,” he said. “And it urgently needs to be either replicated or refuted by other studies by other investigators in other populations.”
