Latest headlines on toxic chemicals and their effect on humans
The Defender’s Big Chemical NewsWatch delivers the latest headlines, from a variety of news sources, related to toxic chemicals and their effect on human health and the environment
Microplastics Could Be Weakening Your Bones, Research Suggests
Microplastics could be a factor in driving up cases of osteoporosis worldwide, according to recently published research. The study reveals that when these tiny plastic particles enter the body, they disrupt the functioning of bone marrow stem cells, which are essential for maintaining and repairing bone tissue.
Throughout your life, your bones are replenished. Osteoporosis is a condition where this process goes wrong, with the breakdown of bone outstripping the rate at which it is replaced. This leads to bones weakening over time and becoming more likely to fracture.
The condition has many risk factors — age, sex, medications, diet, smoking and drinking, and genetics are all known to influence it — with the disease developing slowly over time. Often people don’t realize they have the condition until they break a bone.
This new analysis, published in the journal Osteoporosis International, adds exposure to microplastics as a potential new risk factor. The research reviewed 62 scientific articles that had run various laboratory and animal tests on the possible effects of micro- and nanoplastics on bone.
Analysis of lab experiments showed that microplastics stimulate the formation of osteoclasts, cells created by stem cells in the bone marrow that degrade bone tissue to promote resorption, the process in which the body breaks down and eliminates old or damaged bone.
The study also found that, in relation to bones, plastic particles can reduce the viability of cells, induce premature cellular aging, modify gene expression, and trigger inflammatory responses. The combination of these effects generates an imbalance in which osteoclasts destroy more bone tissue than is regenerated, causing an accelerated weakening of bone structure.
Lead Batteries Are Poisoning Millions of Children. Here Are 3 Proven Ways to Stop It
Remember the Flint, Michigan, water crisis? The public health disaster that, at its peak, poisoned nearly 5% of the city’s children with dangerously high levels of lead in their water? It was perhaps one of the few public health crises in the U.S. that rose to the prominence of a national scandal, sparking outrage and dominating headlines for years.
The fallout led to lawsuits, local and federal investigations, firings of top officials, and a settlement north of $600 million.
But as scandalous as the Flint crisis was, it represents just the tip of a global iceberg.
Around the world, an estimated one in three children — about 800 million kids — has lead levels in their blood as high, or higher, than the kids in Flint did.
That should be a huge cause of concern because lead is a potent neurotoxin that leads to impaired IQ in children, premature deaths in the elderly, and a host of negative effects that last a lifetime. And as far as we know, there are no safe levels of lead exposure.
Household Dust Contains Microplastics That Accelerate Aging at the Cellular Level
Tiny plastic particles are not just in oceans, food and bottled water. These microplastics also settle in ordinary house dust, where they can get into the body and stress the mitochondria that keep our cells running. A recent scientific review connects those exposures to wear and tear on mitochondria, the structures in cells that manage energy and help control stress responses over a lifetime.
The new paper gathered evidence on how microplastics and nanoplastics move from air, food and dust into the body, where they can lodge in tissues and interact with cells.
It also maps how these particles can damage mitochondrial membranes, interrupt energy production, and amplify stress signals.
“Mitochondrial dysfunction is widely recognized as a hallmark of aging,” wrote Liang Kong of the Institute of Translational Medicine, Medical College, Yangzhou University, who led the team that wrote the review.
Houston Parents Fight New Concrete Plant Next to Private School, Citing Dust and Health Risks
The Houston Chronicle reported:
Across the street from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s Houston headquarters, Jessica Koch pulled up a smartphone photo of her 4-year-old daughter, her little face smeared with blood.
The nosebleeds started, according to Koch, when a temporary concrete batch plant began operating next to where her daughter spends recess at The Awty International School in west Houston. Koch was one of many parents who wanted the plant shut down or moved.
“This isn’t a fight we should have to be fighting,” she said, turning to hide tears while dozens of other parents clustered across the road one morning in late August and chanted in protest. Many of the Spring Branch private school’s parents — including doctors, lawyers, executives and a Michelin-star chef — skipped work at the beginning of the school year to protest the clouds of dust near Awty’s Early Learning Campus.
The dust started after Webber, one of the largest construction companies in the country, temporarily moved equipment onto a nearby property to supply concrete for the Interstate 10 expansion.
When parents mapped the area, they found Webber’s towering yellow equipment sat within 500 feet of the Awty campus, a Language Immersion Private Preschool playground, a Houston Rockets training facility and an autism center.
Harris County Commissioner Lesley Briones, who represents the area, called the plant’s position next to preschoolers “unconscionable.”
Illinois Bans PFAS in Firefighter Gear
Illinois firefighters will soon be protected by gear free of PFAS — toxic “forever chemicals” linked to cancer — under a new law signed by Gov. JBPritzker. The Deputy Chief Pete Bendinelli PFAS PPE Act sets a 2027 deadline for phasing out gear containing the chemicals, which are commonly used for water and heat resistance.
Chuck Sullivan, president of the Associated Firefighters of Illinois, said the law is a major step forward in protecting first responders from long-term health risks.
“Up until about 8 to 10 years ago, little did we know that our bunker gear actually contains extremely dangerous forever chemicals,” Sullivan told The Center Square. “We’re putting this on and taking this off 15 to 20 times a day. Cancer has become the leading cause of duty-related deaths for firefighters.”
Illinois joins states like Massachusetts and Connecticut in setting a 2027 cutoff, though Sullivan said the law allows flexibility if manufacturers fall behind. “If that 2027 date isn’t realistic, we have no issue with moving the date somewhere in the future,” he said.
Scientists Are Unraveling the Link Between Pollution and Psoriasis
When Babytai Suryavanshi first noticed a few scaly patches on her right forearm, she ignored them for three months, thinking it was an infection that would heal on its own.
While working in the sorghum fields last year, she noticed the patches had become more raised and red and that they burned.
A doctor diagnosed her with psoriasis, a condition in which the immune system causes skin cells to grow too quickly, resulting in thick, scaly and sometimes itchy patches that often appear on the elbows, knees, scalp, lower back, palms and feet. Although there’s no cure for psoriasis, it can be managed with treatments that suppress parts of the immune system or slow skin growth.
What 76-year-old Suryavanshi didn’t know, and what researchers are now uncovering, is that air pollution can play a role in triggering and worsening this disease.
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If you pay attention for even one day, you will see how often you interact with plastics. They are everywhere. It is all but impossible not to be around them. There is no way to know how much trouble this is causing for health reasons. Is there a test for microplastics accumulated in the body? No doubt big fricking pharma will invent a microplastics busting drug soon.
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