The plastic puzzle...

Plastic pollution on the human heart! Plastic in the bloodstream! We are more contaminated than we realise. Who is to be responsible for the shreds of plastic found in my piece of bread?

Either poor quality production or a lack of hygiene means someone is accountable. Within legality, it is a complex issue; within medical findings, studies are limited. The wheel of finger-pointing is more like Russian roulette.

The majority of us tend to accept whatever is put into the food we buy without questioning it. Even if we are slightly annoyed when we discover a piece of plastic in food or drink, we don't dwell on it. We just move on. We are normalizing poor quality and safety in food production and processing.

Can I file a lawsuit if I find plastic in my food? This is a valid question, but the answer is not straightforward unless you can prove it has caused physical or health harm. Even so, it would be a tiresome and drawn-out battle, and the most likely reward would be a complimentary lunch or refill.

The beginning of the plastic era has been recorded as being in 1839, with the discovery of polystyrene. This was followed by Alexander Parkes in 1856, who created the first man-made plastic using organic material derived from cellulose that, once heated, could be molded and retain its shape when cooled. Since then, a wide range of items, from the telephone in the 1930s to radio receivers in 1935 to everything from car manufacture to medical supplies, have been made using plastic materials.

Videos of plastic debris on beaches and dead turtles from ingesting it are often posted on social media, but images of plastic debris inside bread, drinks, and other foods are scarce. Though there is a large body of research on wildlife consumption of plastic, there is little data on human absorption of plastic particles.

A recently published medical study, Detection of Various Microplastics in Patients Undergoing Cardiac Surgery, revealed that tiny toxic particles of the plastic shed, called microplastics, had been found. Microplastic specimens were collected from 15 cardiac surgery patients. Nine types of microplastics were also detected in pre- and postoperative blood samples.

It is widely known that particles of plastic can be detected in rain, air, water, and the bloodstream. Additionally, microplastics were also detected in human breast milk, bottled water, etc.

If we consider the amount of plastic we ingest, one would think we are already walking credit cards, as the World Wide Fund puts it. According to the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature), an average person could be consuming approximately 5 grams of plastic every week.

Single-use plastics (SUPs), invented for the modern “throwaway society,” are intended to be used only once. It became popular in the 1960s to cut labour costs and the energy required to clean traditional cutlery. SUPs are being increasingly produced and used mostly as packaging or consumables, such as shopping bags or disposable tableware. The Covid-19 pandemic has had growing environmental consequences related to plastic use and follow-up waste. Even before the pandemic, the management of plastic waste was considered a major environmental issue.

Some areas of plastic have become prioritised in political debates, such as the use of plastic bags and ocean pollution, and then they receive scientific and media attention, but everything else is a fragment of a serious issue. Often, there are scholarly articles on plastic pollution's impact on the environment, but the public health agenda as a human health hazard hardly enters the agenda.

There is not zero risk in the food production and bottling processes, and that means that people managing these areas need to have scientific knowledge of food safety and hygiene. The issue deserves better attention.