"I don't know about you, but I have spent a lot of time in recent years thinking about the spoon-sized amount of microplastics that's likely inside my brain. What would I eat with said spoon? I'd ponder. Is it a soup spoon or a demitasse? I'd picture the spoon in pieces, floating somewhere near my parietal lobe. I'd blame the spoon when I couldn't remember the name of a distant acquaintance at a party,"
"Society has largely taken for granted that our bodies-and, perhaps most alarmingly, our brains-harbor microplastics. In the years since, Americans vowed to effectively boycott microplastics, hastily tossing plastic spatulas in the garbage. But the very studies that spurred such mass panic have themselves been called into question recently, according to a report in The Guardian, with scientists finding methodology flaws and challenging whether the spoon-sized amount of microplastics said to be in our brains was actually accurate."
Microplastics were widely believed to accumulate in human bodies and brains, prompting many people to discard plastic utensils. New scrutiny reveals methodological flaws in the studies that produced claims of spoon-sized microplastic quantities in the brain, suggesting those estimates were likely overstated and the health threat smaller than feared. A lower burden of microplastics would be beneficial, yet the rapid acceptance and amplification of preliminary findings by media and consumers highlights failures in translating scientific evidence responsibly. Other notable items include renewed social embrace of alcohol, allegations of corporations shortchanging delivery-app drivers, and public interest in a sexually charged hockey show's tuna melt.
Read at Bon Appetit
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