More news about microplastics (tiny plastic particles) and where they are showing up in humans. Yesterday's post was about microplastics showing up in human blood, and today's post is about a study finding microplastics deep in the lungs of living people.
Yes, not only do we ingest microplastics in our food and water (especially from water bottles), but we also inhale microplastics in the air. This is worrisome because microplastics accumulate in the body, and at this point long term effects are unknown.
Our bodies are not filtering and getting rid of many of the plastic microparticles that we ingest or breathe in (yes, some also get excreted in our feces). No one thinks this is good, and some early study results are showing harm. Some concerns include inflammation, increased risk of cancer, alterations of the microbiome, endocrine disrupting effects from the chemicals in the microplastics.
The 13 people in the study were undergoing surgery (that's a good time to take samples of lung tissue) in the UK. Samples from 11 people found microplastics, with the most common being polypropylene (in plastic packaging and pipes) and PET (in bottles). The images of microparticles in the lung tissue samples are actually horrifying because it is clear they do not belong there!
By the way, some earlier studies also found microplastics in human lungs. Microplastics are a result of plastic breaking down or shedding tiny particles.
We have millions of all sorts of microbes living throughout our respiratory tract (nose, sinuses, mouth, lungs, etc.). A recent study looked at the microbes in the lungs and found that fungi normally live in healthy lungs, including fungi that are usually thought of as harmful. Surprisingly, the fungi found in lungs of people with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) are basically similar to those in healthy people.
The fungi living in different parts of the body is the mycobiome. The lung (pulmonary) microbiome is unique, meaning it is different than in other parts of the respiratory tract, such as the mouth. It used to be thought that the lungs were sterile (unless there was an infection). But now we know that is not true - we normally have fungi, bacteria, and viruses living in our lungs.
University of Bergen researchers analyzed both the oral (mouth) mycobiome and lung mycobiome of 93 persons with COPD and 100 healthy persons (the control group). Surprisingly, both the oral and lung mycobiomes of both healthy and COPD groups were dominated by Candida fungi, with more Candida in the mouth, than in the lungs for both groups. Finding that Candida resides in the lungs of heathy individuals was surprising because it can be a "fungal pathogen" (thus harmful and invasive) in different parts of the body.
One piece of good news - using inhaled steroids didn't seem to affect the lung mycobiome.
Keep in mind that fungi are all around us, both indoors and outdoors, and we are constantly breathing in fungal spores. Our bodies have evolved to handle normal amounts just fine. As the researchers wrote: "Healthy airways possess effective removal of such spores". It's when a person is immunocompromised or has COPD that problems can develop.
The lungs were for a long time considered to be sterile in health, while in diseases like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) failure in immune mechanisms were thought to allow microorganisms to proliferate and persist. New sequencing techniques have shown that several microorganisms reside in the lungs of healthy individuals, as well. Few studies have examined the fungal community in COPD and compared it to healthy controls using such techniques. ...continue reading "Fungi Are Living In Your Lungs"
Scary study results showing what may scientists have long feared - that carbon nanotubes are being released into the environment and getting into our bodies with unknown health effects. The researchers point out that fine particulate matter (PMs) from air pollution penetrate lower airways and are associated with adverse health effects even with low concentrations and that carbon nanotubes are part of this fine particulate matter.Here they discussed how catalytic converters may convert carbon monoxide into carbon nanotubesduring the process of converting carbon monoxide into safer emissions. The problem with carbon nanotubes is that they are so small - so small that we inhale them, but can't cough them out. Carbon nanotubes can be envisioned as one-atom thick sheets of carbon atoms that have been rolled into tubes with diameters as small as 1 nm and lengths up to several centimeters. And scientists are concerned that they may have inflammatory effects on the lungs (similar to what asbestos does). Of course the long-term studies have not yet been done....Because once again, technological advances have outpaced any safety sudies.The researchers studied the lung cells of children with asthma, but it is unclear whether the carbon nanotubes had any effect on or caused their asthma.
Two additional areas of serious concern regarding carbon nanotubes: (1) many tires now contain carbon nanotubes, and with abrasion (wear and tear) the nanotubes are released into the air (air pollution), and (2) the tire crumb fill used in synthetic turf fields. People, including athletes and developing children, are playing on these fields and whatever is in the tires (toxic chemicals, lead, etc. and carbon nanotubes) is being released into the air, and inhaled and ingested by those playing and exercising on the synthetic turf. From Futurity:
Cells taken from the airways of Parisian children with asthma contained man-made carbon nanotubes—just like the kind found in the exhaust pipes of vehicles in Paris. The researchers report in the journal EBioMedicine that these samples align with what has been found elsewhere in US cities, in spider webs in India, and in ice cores. The research in no way ascribes the children’s conditions to the nanotubes, says Rice University chemist Lon Wilson, a corresponding author of a new paper describing the work. But the nanotubes’ apparent ubiquity should be the focus of further investigation, he adds.
“We know that carbon nanoparticles are found in nature,” Wilson says, noting that round fullerene molecules like those discovered at Rice are commonly produced by volcanoes, forest fires, and other combustion of carbon materials. “All you need is a little catalysis to make carbon nanotubes instead of fullerenes.”
Carbon nanotubes (the long rods) and nanoparticles (the black clumps) appear in vehicle exhaust from tailpipes of cars in Paris.
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Carbon inside a lung cell vacuole takes the form of nanotubes (rods) and nanoparticles (black clumps). Credit: Both photos Fathi Moussa, Paris-Saclay Univ.
A car’s catalytic converter, which turns toxic carbon monoxide into safer emissions, bears at least a passing resemblance to the high-pressure carbon monoxide, or HiPco, process to make carbon nanotubes, he says. “So it is not a big surprise, when you think about it,” Wilson adds.
The team—led by Wilson, Fathi Moussa of Paris-Saclay University, and lead author Jelena Kolosnjaj-Tabi, a graduate student at Paris-Saclay—analyzed particulate matter found in the alveolar macrophage cells (also known as dust cells) that help stop foreign materials like particles and bacteria from entering the lungs.
The cells were taken from 69 randomly selected asthma patients aged 2 to 17 who underwent routine fiber-optic bronchoscopies as part of their treatment. For ethical reasons, no cells from healthy patients were analyzed, but because nanotubes were found in all of the samples, the study led the researchers to conclude that carbon nanotubes are likely to be found in everybody.
The study notes but does not make definitive conclusions about the controversial proposition that carbon nanotube fibers may act like asbestos, a proven carcinogen. But the authors reminded that “long carbon nanotubes and large aggregates of short ones can induce a granulomatous (inflammation) reaction.”
The study partially answers the question of what makes up the black material inside alveolar macrophages, the original focus of the study. The researchers found single-walled and multiwalled carbon nanotubes and amorphous carbon among the cells, as well as in samples swabbed from the tailpipes of cars in Paris and dust from various buildings in and around the city. “The concentrations of nanotubes are so low in these samples that it’s hard to believe they would cause asthma, but you never know,” Wilson says. “What surprised me the most was that carbon nanotubes were the major component of the carbonaceous pollution we found in the samples.”
The nanotube aggregates in the cells ranged in size from 10 to 60 nanometers in diameter and up to several hundred nanometers in length, small enough that optical microscopes would not have been able to identify them in samples from former patients. The new study used more sophisticated tools, including high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, X-ray spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and near-infrared fluorescence microscopy to definitively identify them in the cells and in the environmental samples.
“We collected samples from the exhaust pipes of cars in Paris as well as from busy and non-busy intersections there and found the same type of structures as in the human samples,” Wilson says. “It’s kind of ironic. In our laboratory, working with carbon nanotubes, we wear facemasks to prevent exactly what we’re seeing in these samples, yet everyone walking around out there in the world probably has at least a small concentration of carbon nanotubes in their lungs,” he says. The researchers also suggest that the large surface areas of nanotubes and their ability to adhere to substances may make them effective carriers for other pollutants.
The 13 people in the study were undergoing surgery (that's a good time to take samples of lung tissue) in the UK. Samples from 11 people found microplastics, with the most common being polypropylene (in plastic packaging and pipes) and PET (in bottles). The images of microparticles in the lung tissue samples are actually horrifying because it is clear they do not belong there!
Carbon nanotubes (the long rods) and nanoparticles (the black clumps) appear in vehicle exhaust from tailpipes of cars in Paris.