Chemicals in everyday plastics may disrupt the body’s natural 24-hour sleep-wake cycle and circadian rhythm in a way similar to coffee, which increases the risk of sleep disorders, diabetes, immune problems and cancer, new in vitro research shows.
The study looked at chemicals extracted from a PVC medical feeding tube and a polyurethane hydration pouch, like those used by long-distance runners. PVC and polyurethanes are also used in everything from kids toys to food packaging to furniture.
The findings showed for the first time how plastic chemicals probably wreak havoc on cell signals that regulate the body’s internal clock, throwing it off by up to 17 minutes.
“We don’t know the significance of it and you could say, ‘Oh it’s just 15 minutes so it’s not a big deal’, but it’s such a tightly controlled clock that it’s a significant shift,” he (Martin Wagner, a study co-author and plastic chemical researcher with the Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology) added.
Citation: Plastic chemicals disrupt molecular circadian rhythms via adenosine 1 receptor in vitro https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412025001734?dgcid=rss_sd_all#b0365
Do I have to eat a bucket or something for this to happen? I have never ever in my life had the same kind of effect from anything as I get every single time when I drink a cup of coffee after 18:00.
Like the night guard my dentist urges me to wear? Sucking down that plastic all night long! Mmmmmm…delicious plastic…
Shit, i never thought about that!!! I wear mine religiously since i have really bad tmj issues!
And the whole point of the night guard is to be ground up instead of my teeth. There are very clear ridges where my teeth have worn away huge chunks of the material
Well i hope that the material they use has been tested and approved safe for medical use
Otherwise my other option is to let my teeth grind down to the roots and my tm joint desintegrate
Why not silicone?
The way it was explained to me was that it needs to be a rigid material so that when i grind at night, my jaw keeps a certain angle that takes pressure off the TM joint.
So for me, the night guard has two functions. Relieve the joint, and prevent my enamel from wearing away
Maybe there’s a market for artisinal wood carved night guards.
Plastics are going to kill us off before climate change does.
Plastics need us for survival and reproduction so I doubt they will decide to just up and kill all their hosts. The climate that doesn’t need us for shit.
That’s why they’re evolving AI and robots. Plastic won’t need us for reproduction for much longer.
doubt that. plastics are going to fuck us up but not kill us at least in our youth. which is of course. worse really. If these types of things would kill us and be done with it, that would not be so bad.
Being able to adapt to our environment is part of what made humans the dominant species. We’ll lose a significant portion of our population, but we’ll survive.
Plastics are already starting to impact our fertility, and that’s the nail in the coffin.
Humans are like cancer. Climate change might be removing the tumor, but plastics are the radiation/chemo that kills what’s left. Without step 2, the cancer will keep coming back.
Correction:
Humans are not cancer. Capitalism is.
No, humans are. Just look at the entirety of our history.
The world’s richest 10% are responsible for two thirds of global heating:
https://www.sciencealert.com/worlds-richest-10-caused-two-thirds-of-global-heating-study-finds
Guess how they got so filthy rich? Capitalism.
Millions and millions of people work hard every single day, for low pay and zero recognition, protecting, researching, and restoring wilderness around the world.
Millions and millions of people are concerned about climate change, and have changed their lifestyles in order to try to help and reduce the strain on our planet.
Buddy, the rich have been exploiting the masses and ruining the environment for basically all of written human history. Capitalism may have sped it up, but it’s not some new behavior that sprang up out of nowhere.
Capitalism is a product of humans, and humans have always either been shitty and exploitative, or willing to let it happen to protect what they have. No matter what system of government or economics you come up with, humans will eventually corrupt it. I believe our ability to do so is our species’s Great Filter.
The people who have fought against these behaviors were outliers.
Native Americans and other indigenous groups do not subscribe to exploiting the masses and ruining the environment.
Discounting these groups, and people working hard to protect the planet as simply “outliers” is disingenuous.
Saying that all humans are cancer or corrupted is basically emotional immaturity-- it’s a very childlike world view that chooses to ignore reality.
Humans are animals, neither good or bad. Their actions may be helpful or harmful, but that is a choice each every single person makes.
And if you actually bothered to look, you’d find that most people just want to live a peaceful and quiet life.
Or at least sterilize us for a little while, until we can get our shit together.
I think it’s the sterilization combined with climate change that’ll do it. CC will decimate our population, but being sterile will finish us off.
Hahahahaha jokes on you plastic, I already have sleep disorders affecting my circadian rythm, your effect has nothing on me!
Are you old enough to have grown up before plastics were in absolutely everything?
I don’t remember a time before plastics, no. I’m 33
So it very well could be from plastics
new in vitro research shows.
So, they didn’t actually study people’s sleep?
No, because they were studying how plastic toxins affects cells at the molecular level. This study will lead to other studies to check people’s toxin levels vs their sleep patterns.
Yes, it will lead to other studies, but the headline suggests that “Plastics in everyday objects may disrupt sleep in same way as caffeine…” as if they actually compared plastic exposure to caffeine in living people through a sleep study.
Seems like a huge assumption.
I say this, because in vitro studies can point to very wrong, absurdly misleading conclusions. For example, avocado extract appears to damage human chromosomes… in vitro. But when consumed, it’s healthy, and may even be cancer-protective.
… may disrupt sleep …
The opperative word there is “may”. They are not saying it does, only that it may.
But why even jump to that conclusion? They could have said “may cause baldness”, too.
I mean, they come up a list of things, but proved none of it: “Chemicals in everyday plastics may disrupt the body’s natural 24-hour sleep-wake cycle and circadian rhythm in a way similar to coffee, which increases the risk of sleep disorders, diabetes, immune problems and cancer, new in vitro research shows.”
I just wish that journalists would be a little less sensationalist with stuff like this. Even if it were an animal-based study, assumptions should be tempered when it comes to reporting on the implications to human health.
Not to criticize the study, since we really do need to know how these plastics are harming us, but the headlines need to chill out.
This is why whenever I read an article reporting on a scientific study, I always click the source link to read the abstract of the actual paper (or more if it isn’t behind a fucking paywall, but the abstract gives the gist of what was studied and the results).
Because that’s how science works?
We know how things can disrupt the sleep wake cycle. Caffeine does this. The plastics do it the same way in experiments. This means it’s entirely possible that the plastics do the same thing to us, and we should study it l.
Haha, I have adhd, so I’m immune!
