People should avoid heating food and liquid in plastic containers or foam cups, as Irish research adds to concerns about possible links between plastic and diseases such as Parkinson\u2019s or Alzheimer\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Extremely tiny pieces of plastic \u2014 nanoplastics \u2014 have been found previously in human blood, hair, and organs including the brain. Heat can cause these to shed from plastic products.<\/p>\n
This study discovered how these nanoplastics can damage cells in the brain.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dr Gavin Davey, associate professor at the School of Biochemistry and Immunology, Trinity College Dublin, said on Monday: \u201cOur study shows if they get into the brain they have the potential to damage the brain in a similar way that the brain is damaged in Parkinson\u2019s disease.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He stressed this was an association, not a proven cause, saying further studies were needed to understand this fully.<\/p>\n
They looked at what he called \u201chard plastics\u2019 used in lunch boxes, food containers, cutlery and disposable foam cups, among other items. Some of these, including straws, were banned by the EU in 2021.<\/p>\n
He advised people to \u201clook at the box\u201d before heating food or using hot water. Some products have a wax-like lining which makes them more durable.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes my daughter gets a hard box [with her school lunch], but I certainly wouldn\u2019t heat them up. I\u2019d avoid that for sure,\u201d he cautioned.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI would advise against putting hot water into them or microwaving them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The study warned the amount of plastic in our environments now poses an \u201cunder-recognised threat to brain health\u201d.<\/p>\n
As one example, he pointed to analysis of increases in Parkinson\u2019s disease rates, even allowing for the ageing and growing population.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“There\u2019s been a doubling in Parkinson\u2019s disease [rates], which suggests that there is something that has developed in our environment that is causing this increase,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cFor me, there\u2019s an association there with the massive increase in plastics over the last few decades as well, it\u2019s just an association at the moment, but it could be.”<\/p>\n
The idea for the study came from TCD student Devin Seward, who wanted to look at why cell mitochondria \u2014 the part of the cell which makes energy \u2014 are disrupted by nanoplastics.<\/p>\n
Disruption of these has been implicated in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and ageing generally.<\/p>\n
The study is published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials: Plastics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People should avoid heating food and liquid in plastic containers or foam cups, as Irish research adds to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[1201,18,135,19,17,5,1202],"class_list":{"0":"post-65601","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-court-and-crime","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-politics-and-analysis"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}