Micro and Nano Plastics are now everywhere. In the environment, as well as in our body. We ingest them with the contaminated food and water, and even breathing, and the possible harmful effects for our health are still in many ways unknown. A new study just presented during the annual congress of the American company of maternal-fetal medicine reveals one, particularly worrying: the microplastics could in fact increase the risk of preterm parts, and therefore endanger the health of millions of premature babies in everything The world.
Spectrographic analyzes
The research, carried out by a team of scientists coordinated by the University of New Mexico, was carried out by analyzing 175 placia withdrawn at the end of 100 term pregnancies (i.e. in scheduled times, with a birth between 37th and 41st week) and 75 preterm.
Using a high sensitivity mass spectrometer, the researchers probed the samples in search of microscopic plastic fragments, and then compared the results obtained in the chart of children born with those of premature children.
Plastic accumulates during pregnancy
The results highlighted levels of microplastics and nanoplastics much higher in the placenta of preterm born children, with even higher concentrations than those that normally measure themselves in the blood of adults. In all likelihood, therefore, microplastics tend to accumulate in this organ throughout the course of pregnancy. And in the case of the premature parts, this accumulation takes place at a much higher speed: if it were constant, in fact, one would expect to find more at the end of the pregnancies that last longer.
“In other words, a preterm birth not only accumulates more nanoplastic and microplastic in the placenta, compared to what happens in the term parts, but does it also in a previous moment of pregnancy”, explains Kjersi Aagaard, maternal-fetal health specialist who He collaborated with the research. “This suggests the possibility that the accumulation of plastic can contribute to the risk that a premature birth will take place. If we combine these results with those of other recent works that have investigated problems ranging from cardiac disorders to strokes, the evidence that exposure to plastic is harmful to human health are increasingly convincing “.