Nowadays, microplastics can be said to be everywhere, from Mount Everest to the Antarctic and North Pole, it has been found. In addition to the wild, scientists have also found traces of microplastics in the human body.

According to foreign media reports, a study published a few days ago in "ACS Publications" showed that a large amount of microplastics were found in human feces, especially in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

The report pointed out that by analyzing the characteristics of microplastics in the stools of patients with inflammatory bowel disease and healthy people, a total of 15 microplastics were found, including polyethylene terephthalate (22.3-34.0%) and polyamide (8.9%). -12.4%) is dominant, and its main shapes are flake and fibrous respectively.

In addition, the researchers also found that patients with inflammatory bowel disease have 1.5 times more microplastics than healthy people, and the feces of patients with inflammatory bowel disease have a high content of microplastics, and their symptoms will become more severe.

The researchers said that as an observational study, although the specific mechanism between microplastics and inflammatory bowel disease is not clear, it may be the underlying cause of diarrhea, rectal bleeding and abdominal cramps.

In addition, it may also be because inflammatory bowel disease makes it more difficult to remove microplastics in the diet. This also means that further research is needed to explore the hazards of microplastics, because there is still little understanding of this kind of thing.

In 2017, 7 million people worldwide were diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease. The disease includes ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. It is an idiopathic intestinal inflammatory disease involving the ileum, rectum, and colon. Shows diarrhea, abdominal pain, and even bloody stools.

It is reported that an item from 2019 invited 8 healthy subjects, and microplastics were detected in each person’s feces, and every 10 grams of feces contained 20 pieces of microplastics (plastics with a size of 50 to 500 microns). Therefore, it can be estimated that each person eats about 73,000 pieces of microplastics each year.

These plastics include 9 kinds. The most abundant microplastics are polypropylene and polyethylene terephthalate, both of which are packaging materials for food and water. The latter is considered to be the largest source of plastic in the human body.