Back in 2010, when a small human being popped into my world ( I say “small” and “popped”, but she was 9lb 4 oz, and my wife is 5ft 4 inches, so more like a 24 hour marathon followed by screaming and blood, but still….)

Picture of my actual wife with the actual small human inside, hilarious!

pregnant

Anyhoo….once she arrived amongst a raft of things I thought I did and did not want to be part of her life, was trying not to use too much plastic in her life, especially things like phthalates in bottles.

Back then, this was not common knowledge, especially the idea that they are hormonal disruptors and can behave like estrogens.

This article is from back in 2009.

endocrine disruptors1

endocrine disruptors2

Maybe that is part of the reason for girls going into puberty earlier?

Rates of miscarriages up 1% a year

Could it be why testosterone and sperm counts are dropping and fertility issue are up 1% a year?

Or even why penis sizes in boys are getting smaller in mothers with high phthalate levels.

penises shrinking

https://www.health.com/condition/infertility/penis-size-shrinking-pollution

decrease in anogenital

Gents, shit just got real didn’t it……

gents

But these days, the idea of microplastics is mainstream and a real concern.

We now have a recent study showing people have microplastics in their blood.

plastic particle

In my mind, this has always been from food and fluids, but it turns out this is incorrect.

We now have another study showing the most concentrated areas is the lungs, suggesting we are breathing in microplastics.

human lung tissue

human lung tissue2

Note that the most abundant plastic is polypropylene.

Bad news coming up peeps, a key filter in the surgical masks is……

polypropylene

polypropylene2

Oh dear.

Now, let us be clear, in the article showing microplastics in the lungs, they in no way implicated masks as a cause at all.

The fact they didn’t even mention masks use polyproylene is frankly odd, but still…..