Animal Digestible Food Packaging Initiative

The abstract of a December 22, 2021, Environmental Science and Technology paper https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c03924 by researchers with China Nanjing University and Nanjing Medical University reports that “… Human ingestion of microplastics (MPs) is inevitable ... Whether the ingestion of MPs poses a substantial risk to human health is far from understood. Here, by analyzing the characteristics of MPs in the feces of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and healthy people … we found that the fecal MP concentration in IBD patients … was significantly higher than that in healthy people ... In total, 15 types of MPs were detected in feces, with poly(ethylene terephthalate) … and polyamide … being dominant ... we conclude that the plastic packaging of drinking water and food and dust exposure are important sources of human exposure to MPs. Furthermore, the positive correlation between fecal MPs and IBD status suggests that MP exposure may be related to the disease process or that IBD exacerbates the retention of MPs ... Our results also highlight that fecal MPs are useful for assessing human MP exposure and potential health risks …” #MicroPlastics #PlasticWaste #SingleUsePlastic