Polyester Clothing & Microplastics In Our Bloodstreams
Dear EarthTalk: Is it true that polyester clothing might be a significant factor in the microplastics in our bodies and bloodstreams?
—Steve Wilson, New York, NY
Plastic in the 21st century can be described simply: ubiquitous. We see it in food packaging and water bottles, but it is also present in cosmetics and clothing. The invention of plastic in 1907 ushered in a new era of convenience. A story in Life magazine from 1955, “Throwaway Living,” encouraged housewives to ditch chores and turn to single-use disposable kitchenware, and plastic use never looked back. In the past few decades, plastic production skyrocketed to 8.3 billion tons as of 2021; According to the United Nations, polyester production alone has increased 900 percent since 1980.
When reflecting on plastic pollution, co-founder of Stanford Medicine’s Plastics and Health Working Group, Desiree LaBeaud, put it perfectly: “Plastic never goes away—it just breaks down into finer and finer particles.” Polyester fibers are extreme offenders when it comes to shedding microplastics. The fibers from polyester and nylon easily travel through air and water making them difficult to avoid.
One shocking headline says that we consume a credit card’s worth of plastic each week, while a less eye-catching article disputed that claim, estimating 23,000 years to ingest that amount. The reality of these vast differences is that there are no standardized methods to measure microplastics yet. When reviewing microplastics in 2022, The World Health Organization explained they could not come to a conclusion on their impact because of a lack of reliable data.
Nonetheless there is evidence that microplastics accumulate in the human body. We ingest it in our food and water, and it’s in our air. Per the Chair of Environmental Toxicology at City University in Hong Kong, small enough particles can even enter the body through the skin; not something you want to hear while wearing a polyester shirt. Initial observations suggest that microplastics may negatively impact digestive, respiratory, endocrine, reproductive and immune systems.
This is mostly observed in nonhuman animals thus far. Kara Meister, who studies microplastics’ roles in pediatric disease at Stanford Medicine says “probably within the next year or two we’ll have a couple more big landmark papers [which will inform us on the impacts of microplastics in humans].” Meister urges people not to succumb to “doomsday” thinking because we have plastics in our bodies. She instead encourages people to live a healthy lifestyle with good sleep, diet and stress management, saying “Giving your body the best shot to deal with whatever might come along is the best you can do.”
CONTACT
EarthTalk® is produced by Roddy Scheer & Doug Moss for the 501(c)3 nonprofit EarthTalk. See more at https://emagazine.com. To donate, visit https://earthtalk.org. Send questions to: question@earthtalk.org.