@spruce112358 saidYour statement is the truth of your proposition. Because people are dumber, Trump gets away with it. Is this connected to the claim by Alex Jones that tetra-packs are turning our boys gay?
If people are dumber because of microplastics as @wildgrass suggests, we first have to ask, "Did these people ever hear Donald Trump speak?" 😆
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@wildgrass saidI think this is the sort of data we want to have and parse. This paper is only a few days old:
In mice, microplastics block blood flow to brain (which makes sense).
Blocking blood flow to the brain lowers intelligence (which makes sense).
Intelligence has been decreasing as microplastics have been increasing.
These correlations suggests that a spoonful of microplastics in our brains may be contributing to neurological function.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00178-0
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03453-1
Post-mortem, they found higher concentrations of nano plastics in brain tissue compared to liver and kidney. And concentrations have increased between 2016 and 2024.
More highlights:
In controlled cell culture and animal exposure studies, MNPs exacerbate disease or drive toxic outcomes, but at concentrations with unclear relevance to human exposures and body burdens. The mantra of the field of toxicology—‘dose makes the poison’ (Paracelsus)—renders such discoveries as easily anticipated; what is not clearly understood is the tissue distribution and internal dose of MNPs in humans, which confounds our ability to interpret the controlled exposure study results.
total plastics concentrations in dementia samples... were higher than in any normal frontal cortex cohort .... Atrophy of brain tissue, impaired blood–brain barrier integrity and poor clearance mechanisms are hallmarks of dementia and would be anticipated to increase MNP concentrations; thus, no causality is assumed from these findings.
While we suspected that MNPs might accumulate in the body over a lifespan, the lack of correlation between total plastics and decedent age (P = 0.87 for brain data) does not support this (Supplementary Fig. 1). However, total mass concentration of plastics in the brains analyzed in this study increased by approximately 50% in the past 8 years. Thus, we postulate that the exponentially increasing environmental concentrations of MNPs2,14 may analogously increase internal maximal concentrations.
EDIT: So this paper is the same as the one in the OP, but the detailed results not a summary of it.
@wildgrass saidI forget which paper you referenced showing people getting dumber - but I recall as I scanned through it, they could not rule out several other possible explanations. One possible cause was simply a change in teaching methods and emphasis which has occurred over the years. 🙂
Intelligence has been decreasing as microplastics have been increasing.
I think of that as the 'Jeopardy' paradigm which highlights the difference between being knowledgable and being creative. I think it is fair to say that we don't train people's memories as much as we used to - we assume that everything can be 'looked up' and instead focus on other skills like problem-solving that are more difficult to measure with the standard IQ test.
But this is definitely something to look into in a systematic way. The body can eliminate lots of foreign materials, but some things like lead it has a problem with. We had to eliminate lead from the environment for our health.
Eliminating plastic from our lives would be much harder, but it might be necessary; or not. More study is needed. 😆
@spruce112358 saidThis issue will take care of itself when climate change melts the snow and ice in Greenland and humanity is plunged back 500 years, no more plastics.
But this is definitely something to look into in a systematic way. The body can eliminate lots of foreign materials, but some things like lead it has a problem with. We had to eliminate lead from the environment for our health.
Eliminating plastic from our lives would be much harder, but it might be necessary; or not. More study is needed. 😆
@Cliff-Mashburn saidHe does it to himself, cliff. 😂😂😂
IT'S GOTTA BE TRUMP'S FAULT IN SOME WAY.
https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1887916067491574108
@wildgrass saidso by that logic....
In mice, microplastics block blood flow to brain (which makes sense).
Blocking blood flow to the brain lowers intelligence (which makes sense).
Intelligence has been decreasing as microplastics have been increasing.
These correlations suggests that a spoonful of microplastics in our brains may be contributing to neurological function.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00178-0
Global temperature has increased as the number of pirates have decreased.
So to reduce global temperature we should increase the number of pirates!