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Tiny bits of plastic smaller than 000.1 millimetres are getting into human bodies and adding to the increasing ineffectiveness of many antibiotics, a European team of medical researchers has found.
These minute particles from plastic bottles and bags “not only impair the effect of the drugs, but could also promote the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria,” according to the research published in Scientific Reports, one of the Nature stable of journals.
“Our data show that the interaction of micro- and nanoplastics with drugs can alter drug absorption, facilitate drug transport to new locations, and increase local antibiotic concentrations, potentially attenuating antibiotic effect and at the same time promoting antibiotic resistance,” the team said.
In tests and computer modelling involving commonly-used plastics such as polystyrene, the researchers saw particles can bind to and reduce the effectiveness of tetracycline, a commonly-used antibiotic and thus impair the effectiveness of the medication.
“The binding was particularly strong with nylon,” which is released from clothes and textiles and can get into the human body via respiration, said Lukas Kenner of the Medical University of Vienna.
Worse still, the binding means the drugs could be dragged around to regions of the body where they are not needed or could have negative effects, according to the team, which included scientists from the University of Bonn and the University of Debrecen.
Nanoplastics and slightly bigger microplastics have been found to enter human blood and brain systems, sometimes passing into bodies via perspiration, and to pass from mother to unborn child.
Awareness of the possible health dangers of microplastics has grown as environmentalists raise concerns about plastic pollution and dumping of rubbish in seas and oceans, where it breaks down and enters the food chain.
Meanwhile, the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance, the resistance by germs to the drugs, could be the cause of almost 5 million deaths a year, according to research published in May by The Lancet, a medical journal.
