59. Environmental micro(nano) plastics – what’s going on?
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CORDIScovery podcast- Episode #59 - Environmental micro(nano) plastics – what’s going on?
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:16:03 - 00:00:43:02
Abigail Acton
Hello. Welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery with me, Abigail Acton. Many of us are looking over our shoulders uneasily at the idea of the amount of nano and microplastics in our environment, so if you're asking yourself what the impact might be, listen on. The exponential increase in the production and use of plastics translates into an increase of the environmental plastic waste, which is continually degraded into smaller and smaller particles.
00:00:43:05 - 00:01:13:24
Abigail Acton
Tire ware, textiles breaking down, plastics used in agriculture or just abandoned litter: a handful of examples of the multiple ways plastic weaves its way into our environment to be found in drinking water, air and the food chain through soil. While the presence of microplastics in the ocean has been extensively studied over the past few decades, the existence of microplastics in soil has only recently become a major topic of research, and that research is showing that plants are altered by exposure.
00:01:14:00 - 00:01:45:12
Abigail Acton
Substantial physiological responses in plants to microplastics have been recorded, so these include, for example, a decline in chlorophyl and elevated levels of stress hormones found both in lab and field crops due to the presence of microplastics in soil. Despite recent efforts to assess the risks to people associated with micro and nano plastics, we still don't know enough. One reason for that is the lack of reliable, validated methods that are able to generate the science based data we need.
00:01:45:14 - 00:02:09:20
Abigail Acton
Our guests today, whose work has been supported by EU research and innovation funding, can give us a better understanding of what's going on. Luca Nizzetto is chief scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Water Research, in Oslo. He has coordinated pioneering international research on plastic pollution in agricultural ecosystems, revealing the widespread occurrence of microplastics and their impact on soil fertility and crops.
00:02:09:21 - 00:02:11:12
Abigail Acton
Hello, Luca. Welcome.
00:02:11:14 - 00:02:14:04
Luca Nizzetto
Hi. Thank you very much. I'm very happy to be here.
00:02:14:04 - 00:02:29:18
Abigail Acton
We're happy to have you here. Alba Hernandez is a professor of Genetics and the leader of the Mutagenesis Group at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She's particularly interested in how emerging contaminants may contribute to long-term human health effects. Welcome, Alba.
00:02:29:20 - 00:02:34:05
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Hello, everybody. Really nice for me to be here with you.
00:02:34:07 - 00:02:44:22
Abigail Acton
Mark Morrison is a senior consultant with Optima, in Glasgow. He focuses on the way in which living organisms can be used in the development of new, sustainable processes. Hello, Mark.
00:02:44:24 - 00:02:48:04
Mark Morrison
Hi, Abigail. Really pleased to be here with everybody else.
00:02:48:06 - 00:03:03:17
Abigail Acton
Super. Okay, Luca, I'm going to turn to you. The PAPILLONS project set out to improve our understanding of the impact plastics used in agriculture have on the environment as they break down. So Luca why this area of research. What drew you to the subject?
00:03:03:19 - 00:03:26:22
Luca Nizzetto
Well. After beginning of my career in the Italian Navy, training to become a naval officer at the age of 20, I realised that my deepest motivation was actually directed towards nature rather than weapons. I therefore moved into the natural sciences, fully aware that we are living to one of the most serious environmental crisis in the history of the planet.
00:03:26:24 - 00:03:43:08
Luca Nizzetto
Real war if you want. This was caused by climate change, biodiversity and pollution. I choose to focus on pollution, possibly the less understood among these causes, and also obviously a driver of human health impairment.
00:03:43:12 - 00:03:44:17
Abigail Acton
Absolutely.
00:03:44:19 - 00:04:01:14
Luca Nizzetto
Pollution takes many forms and includes plastic and microplastic, as you correctly introduced. And during the last ten years, my contribution has been mainly in research in microplastic interstellar environment. And this was at the time a new branch in this area.
00:04:01:15 - 00:04:09:13
Abigail Acton
Okay. Super. So when we say environmental plastics, what do we currently understand by that term? Let's really clarify what we're talking about today.
00:04:09:14 - 00:04:26:23
Luca Nizzetto
Yes. Well each year 60 to 80 million tonnes of mismanaged plastic enter the terrestrial environment. And this is a lot of plastic. This can be, for example, containing about 3 million standard containers like those transported by cargo ships around the world.
00:04:26:23 - 00:04:28:03
Abigail Acton
Wow.
00:04:28:05 - 00:04:39:15
Luca Nizzetto
Plastic pollution is therefore not just a waste problem. It is a process of planetary relevance. These plastics that reach the environment are called environmental plastics.
00:04:39:20 - 00:05:12:17
Luca Nizzetto
Most of them are currently present as large debris like litter, mismanaged waste or illegally disposed waste. But fragmentation into micro nano plastic is inevitable. These particles are persistent and mobile, and they can become widely geographically distributed, with soil acting as an important, maybe a global major recipient. Microplastic can affect soil and plant health. Small microplastic and nano plastic can accumulate in plants after entering through the roots.
00:05:12:18 - 00:05:18:00
Luca Nizzetto
They reach edible parts in this way. Also, they reach the human food chain.
00:05:18:02 - 00:05:30:08
Abigail Acton
Okay, that's a very clear explanation. It's a huge quantity. Really a huge quantity. So what did PAPILLONS do to gain a better understanding of the impact through agriculture on human health?
00:05:30:09 - 00:05:57:12
Luca Nizzetto
Of course, thanks to the support from the Horizon Framework program, we were able to join forces among 20 European research institutes to shed light for the first time on the sources, occurrence and impacts of microplastic in agriculture at European scale. For example, we develop methods to quantify how much plastic and what type of plastic is used in agriculture in different regions of Europe.
00:05:57:16 - 00:06:08:09
Luca Nizzetto
Creating a European atlas of agricultural plastic waste that help estimating exposure risks, but also help planning better waste management options.
00:06:08:11 - 00:06:20:22
Abigail Acton
And is this atlas - it's a lovely description of the product - is this something that people can consult and take a look at? Anybody can look at? Or is this something that's really just for, you know, other scientists and a closed group?
00:06:20:24 - 00:06:40:17
Luca Nizzetto
Of course we have a link through our web page and this is accessible. People, anyone can explore and try to get a glimpse of what is the amount of plastic in their own region, for example. The Atlas can be found in our web page papillons-h2020.eu.
00:06:40:19 - 00:06:46:20
Abigail Acton
Okay. And that's PAPILLONS, P A P I L L O N S, correct?
00:06:46:21 - 00:06:47:18
Luca Nizzetto
Correct.
00:06:47:19 - 00:06:56:21
Abigail Acton
Lovely. Okay, so you've got this wonderful atlas that can show people the distribution of this problematic plastic. What else did the project do?
00:06:56:23 - 00:07:45:11
Luca Nizzetto
Yes, of course we could, for example, design very sophisticated experiments in laboratory equipped to reproduce environmental condition to understand how plastic move within soil and from soil and how do they are accumulated or effect soil, organism and plants. We could also design very large experiments in real agricultural fields simultaneously in southern, central and northern Europe, where we artificially added microplastics to soil in a controlled way to study over the long term, for example, two years or more changes in soil health, fertility and plant performance, as well as the nutritional characteristic of crops affected by plastic.
00:07:45:15 - 00:08:17:21
Luca Nizzetto
Finally, and importantly, we also managed to run the first large scale European monitoring of microplastic in agricultural soils, overcoming several technical problems linked to the challenging analysis of identifying and measuring these tiny particles in soil. You can imagine that is like finding needles in a haystack. But we manage visiting over 70 locations across all Europe and providing the first overview of how contaminated is Europe by these contaminants.
00:08:17:22 - 00:08:30:03
Abigail Acton
Okay, sounds a very in depth approach, and also as if you found some rather important results. So could you tell us a little bit more about what you actually established through these experiments?
00:08:30:05 - 00:09:10:20
Luca Nizzetto
Of course, we found that microplastics are unfortunately already widespread in European soils, with hotspots containing as much as 0.1 to 0.8% of plastic in soil by weight. And this is a very high concentration above effect levels. The use of plastic in agriculture is an important source of this pollution, but it is not the only one: fertilization with sewage sludge or contaminated compost, as well as diffuse atmospheric deposition of airborne small plastic particles may, in some locations, represent the dominant sources.
00:09:10:22 - 00:09:27:18
Luca Nizzetto
We also found that soil properties can be affected by this pollution already at environmentally plausible levels. In particular, microplastics interfere with the cycling of nutrient at the field level, which is a crucial for soil fertility.
00:09:27:21 - 00:09:30:06
Abigail Acton
And what does this mean as a result?
00:09:30:08 - 00:09:58:15
Luca Nizzetto
Well, it means that in order to retain performance in food production in agriculture, farmers may have to set in place different practices or treat their soil in a different way, especially in a future perspective, when those levels will increase. We need to remember this sad fact. We are maybe at the beginning of an increasing trajectory.
00:09:58:16 - 00:10:16:18
Abigail Acton
So I mean, actually, that ties in very well to my last question. I mean, as you say, we already know that there are large amounts of plastics that have yet to break down. So with regards to your research and what you found, how do you hope that this will filter into policy making? How do you believe that this could perhaps change things or make things better?
00:10:16:19 - 00:11:00:04
Luca Nizzetto
Yeah, of course. This finding opens a concern for the future of food safety and food security as well. When we are talking about effects on soil fertility, which we should remember that, as we just said, microplastic will increase in future. Small microplastics are up taken by crops. And this becomes also a concern for human health. And so the policy needs to embrace the one health approach, where the protection of the environment and the protection of human health are seen as an integrated issue.
00:11:00:08 - 00:11:08:19
Abigail Acton
Super. I understand that your findings have actually already been delivered to some policymakers. How is it feeding into recent papers on this subject?
00:11:08:22 - 00:11:52:09
Luca Nizzetto
Yes, we were very actively involved in dialogs with the European Commission and that demonstrated to be attentive to the development and the discoveries of this project. So while we were really operating alongside the parallel development of the policy framework for the soil protection, the so-called soil monitoring law, we could really last minute, just a few days before the final approval of the law, to make sure that microplastics were mentioned in the policy as critical soil contaminants that need to be considered in future regulations and monitoring actions.
00:11:52:09 - 00:11:53:18
Abigail Acton
Excellent.
00:11:53:19 - 00:11:58:16
Luca Nizzetto
We're very happy that we managed to achieve this initial impact.
00:11:58:17 - 00:12:11:07
Abigail Acton
No, that's excellent. And it's a concrete outcome of the project, something I'm sure you will be feeling proud about. Super. Thank you so much. That was an excellent explanation. Thank you Luca. Does anyone have any questions or observations to make to Luca? Yes. Alba.
00:12:11:11 - 00:12:25:09
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Yeah. Maybe I would ask Luca: according to your expertise, what do you think is the most important challenge nowadays, methodologically speaking, to understand the exposure, quantify the exposure in the environment.
00:12:25:13 - 00:13:02:13
Luca Nizzetto
Yes. Thank you very much. And there is a clear challenge and that is the elevated cost of running monitoring studies. Analysing microplastic in soils costs about €1,500 per sample. And this is a strong limiting factor to set in place routine monitoring at national level for example. So we need to streamline this and to support the implementation of the upcoming environmental protection regulation.
00:13:02:14 - 00:13:19:01
Abigail Acton
Could AI help with that? I mean, sometimes we have people on the program that talk about mass spectrometry for picking out sort of, you know, chemical compositions within a wider context. I mean, if you could run some sort of sensor and then have it interpreted by AI, would that not make things much quicker and easier?
00:13:19:02 - 00:13:41:22
Luca Nizzetto
Yes, indeed. There are different techniques that can be utilised to detect these microplastics. One of them utilise mass spectrometry, and this promise to be faster and more efficient way to do that. In reality, plastics are mostly made of carbon hydrogen, similar to most organic components of soils.
00:13:41:24 - 00:13:42:14
Abigail Acton
Ah, yes.
00:13:42:15 - 00:13:48:15
Luca Nizzetto
So it's still very difficult to have a clean signal which is univocally related to plastic.
00:13:48:16 - 00:13:50:19
Abigail Acton
Yes, that muddies the waters a little bit.
00:13:50:20 - 00:14:20:15
Luca Nizzetto
Yes. On the other hand, the approach we use is through sophisticated microscopes which utilise infrared spectroscopy. They can simultaneously recognise the polymer, tell us about the shape and the color of the plastic. And this is crucial to identify for example the sources which tell us what is the priority, what should we focus to curb further pollution.
00:14:20:19 - 00:14:38:13
Abigail Acton
Perfect. Oh that's excellent. That's interesting. It's very interesting to know what tools you're actually using to look for them. And the idea of being able to identify the sources. Of course. Very important. Thank you very much. Luca Alba, I'm going to turn to you now by combining the use of breakthrough research and validated test methods,
00:14:38:14 - 00:14:52:08
Abigail Acton
PLASTICHEAL established solid scientific evidence of how environmental microplastics interact with our bodies. So now we've heard about the fact that there is a lot of plastic out there. What is it actually doing it to us? Alba.
00:14:52:10 - 00:15:22:17
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Yeah. Actually there's a lot of information already of how much microplastic may be in the environment, but there's still a lot of information missing on what this microplastic may actually do inside our bodies. We know that people are continuously exposed to this microplastic through the air they breath, the food they eat, the water they drink. So the question is what the exposure may mean for human health over time.
00:15:22:19 - 00:15:49:24
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
For responding to this question, size really matters in the context because many microplastics are too large to cross the body natural barriers. This is the lungs and the gut. But nanoplastics are small enough to potentially pass, transferred from the lungs to the gut into the bloodstream and then from the bloodstream, spread throughout the body to the different organs where they may accumulate over time.
00:15:50:00 - 00:15:50:11
Abigail Acton
Okay.
00:15:50:12 - 00:15:59:22
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
So that is why I became particularly interested in nanoplastics, so the smallest ones and the possible long-term effects.
00:16:00:01 - 00:16:07:14
Abigail Acton
So super. So yeah, clearly that's something that needs to be looked at. So what did PLASTICHEAL do to try and understand the connection?
00:16:07:15 - 00:16:36:08
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
So one thing that we have tried to do is to reproduce very well what are the exposure conditions that are closer to real life. Many laboratory studies expose cells to very high concentrations of microplastics for a short period of time. This is very useful to understand whether microplastics are toxic or not, but it may not really reflect what happens in everyday life, where people are exposed to much lower levels over many years.
00:16:36:08 - 00:16:50:23
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
So we have tried to develop long-term advanced laboratory models using human cells, and then we have exposed these cells to low concentrations of nanoplastics for extended periods and monitor what happened over time.
00:16:50:24 - 00:16:51:09
Abigail Acton
Okay.
00:16:51:10 - 00:17:01:22
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
And in this scenario we focus on two types of cells: one was epithelial cells that are the cells that are in the lining or the or the organs,
00:17:01:24 - 00:17:28:04
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
the first encountering the contaminant. And then also in stem cells that are long living cells that are there to renew tissues throughout the whole life. So in these settings we looked at several biological processes after exposing these cells over time. And we examined, for instance, where the genes are being switched on or off differently.
00:17:28:05 - 00:17:45:07
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
whether DNA damage accumulates, where the cells change the way they grow or the way they communicate with each other. And whether they begin to acquire characteristics that we normally associate with early stages of cancer development.
00:17:45:08 - 00:17:49:06
Abigail Acton
Okay. That's very interesting. And what did you find, Alba?
00:17:49:07 - 00:18:16:09
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Well, actually, what is one of the most interesting things that we found is that even at these low concentration, low doses that are realistic doses that we can encounter in the environment, we see how these epithelial cells and these stem cells start behaving differently at the molecular level. So their genes and some of their biological processes change due to the chronic long-term exposure.
00:18:16:10 - 00:18:26:18
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
And then the cells stop behaving like healthy cells and start behaving more like we associate with tumoral phenotype, tumor-like cells.
00:18:26:20 - 00:18:34:06
Abigail Acton
Okay. But obviously just to clarify, we're not saying necessarily that there is a connection directly between exposure and cancer.
00:18:34:07 - 00:19:05:24
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Yeah, actually science is never that simple. This is not a clear connection with nanoplastic exposure and cancer. But what it is important is that we are observing an association of alterations of biological processes that are somehow connected with cancer. So even it's not a direct connection. It is some hints that we need to explore more deeply. What happens after long-term exposure is a clear indication that we should look more at this realistic.
00:19:05:24 - 00:19:11:04
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
What happens to the cells, to the tissues under these realistic exposure conditions.
00:19:11:06 - 00:19:13:08
Abigail Acton
Right. So clearly there is disruption.
00:19:13:09 - 00:19:14:00
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Yes
00:19:14:01 - 00:19:20:24
Abigail Acton
Okay. If we think of future generations, Alba, what do you think are the key points to consider from your project area?
00:19:21:01 - 00:19:51:22
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Many times I think of what I call the endless cycle of environmental contaminants. So typically we have observed this with many contaminants. There is a product that is released claiming that is safe. Then it comes into our everyday products. It starts spreading into the environment and much, much later, like 10, 20 years later, we start observing that it may be harmful to our health and then we start to take action.
00:19:51:23 - 00:20:20:15
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
And for me, what it is important, I think that this is what we are now observing for micro and nanoplastics. We are now realising that they may be harmful. And what I would like is my results to stop somehow breaking this cycle and shorten the time we need to really take action, if we observe that these micro and nanoplastics are really a problem to our health.
00:20:20:16 - 00:20:30:13
Abigail Acton
Excellent. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much for the important work and for a very clear explanation. Much appreciated. Does anyone have any observations to make to Alba, please? Yes, Mark.
00:20:30:15 - 00:20:31:05
Mark Morrison
Hi, Alba.
00:20:31:06 - 00:20:31:17
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Hi.
00:20:31:21 - 00:20:42:04
Mark Morrison
Did you see any differences with different types of plastics? So you looked at lots of different nanoplastics. Were any different polymers worse than others?
00:20:42:05 - 00:21:10:13
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Yeah. That is a really interesting and relevant question because we have used in this attempt to reproduce the realistic scenario. We have used different nanoplastics. Some of them are like very similar to what we found in the environment. These plastics came for instance, from the release from plastic bottles or teabags for instance. And these resemble very well the characteristics of what we have found in the environment.
00:21:10:13 - 00:21:42:19
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
And some other plastics that we have used are more artificial, let's say, not really resembling what we found in the environment. And we have observed that those plastics that are more closely resembling what's in nature are the ones that are affecting the cells more. So there is a connection on how much realistic is the material and how much important, relevant are the results that we are obtaining.
00:21:42:20 - 00:22:01:09
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
So I think that it is also very important that the community, the scientific field, focusses on these realistic micro and nanoplastics only and leave aside all those test materials that are not similar to what we find in the environment.
00:22:01:14 - 00:22:18:08
Abigail Acton
Okay. Super. Thank you very much, Alba. That's wonderful. Mark, I am going to turn to you now. PlasticsFatE also considered how we're responding to micro and nanoparticles in our environment. But Mark, your project was looking at the impact of microplastics on the human body with a slightly different approach. Can you tell me more about that?
00:22:18:10 - 00:22:45:21
Mark Morrison
Yeah. Sure can. Abigail. So we wanted to understand how micro and nanoplastics or MNPs as I'll called them in the rest of this short talk and behave in the real world, not just in lab conditions. So in practice, in the real world, as we've heard from the other speakers, and they're never pristine. They're they're coated in different things, so coated in biological contaminants and chemical contaminants.
00:22:45:21 - 00:23:13:08
Mark Morrison
And you just have to look at plastics that you find in a beach or in a field or whatever. They're quite often dirty or oily, whatever. And we were interested in what are the effects from the plastics and what are the effects of the plastic plus contaminants. And we also as Alba has mentioned, we were interested in what are the differences with different types of plastics so we're exposed to PET from plastic bottles, polyethylene from packaging.
00:23:13:08 - 00:23:46:07
Mark Morrison
What happens when they are broken down into different sizes or microsize and nanosized particles? What happens if there are different shapes? And we looked at them in both terms of pristine conditions, so as you would find them in a pure product, and then we contaminated them. So the microplastics we coated them in bacteria that you can find in marine environments, lake environments, brackish waters, the nanoplastics we coated them in chemicals that are quite often used in plastic manufacturing.
00:23:46:07 - 00:24:12:16
Mark Morrison
And we studied these in cell systems, cell systems that replicated what are the normal routes or the most common routes for people to be exposed to. So we looked primarily at the gastrointestinal tract, and we also looked at respiratory airways. And we measured the effects of these particles in terms of changes in gene expression and in changes in protein activity.
00:24:12:18 - 00:24:32:17
Abigail Acton
It sounds very in-depth and also much needed because clearly it's an approach that looks at the realistic situation in which we can find ourselves, the parts of our body that really might be impacted by bits of plastic contaminated with things that realistically, could be there. Has this been done before? Because it seems like a logical thing to do?
00:24:32:19 - 00:24:59:19
Mark Morrison
Perhaps not at this level. So one of the big contributions of PlasticsFatE, along with other projects, so we were part of a cluster of five projects that were funded under the same call, part of the CUSP cluster to bring more consistency to this approach. So harmonisation was a key word here. So a number of the researchers that were involved in our project and other projects had worked with engineered nanomaterials in the past.
00:24:59:19 - 00:25:23:06
Mark Morrison
And the early days of that research had revealed quite different results, because effectively, the researchers that were looking at the engineered nanomaterials were using different types of materials. They hadn't been well characterized, and they were using different methods that they were getting different results. So we started from the premise that we wanted to have a set of well characterised materials.
00:25:23:06 - 00:25:43:22
Mark Morrison
So we took different types of plastics, we made different sizes of them, we made different shapes of them, and we characterised them really well. And then we use those sets in all of our experiments. So we were then able to reflect on the results and what was due to the plastic type, size, shape and the contaminant that we were looking at.
00:25:43:23 - 00:25:44:14
Abigail Acton
Excellent.
00:25:44:16 - 00:25:46:00
Mark Morrison
And the combination of the two.
00:25:46:02 - 00:25:56:23
Abigail Acton
That sounds very comprehensive. And yeah, the standardisation clearly is really important. Otherwise you don't know whether you're comparing like with like. So Mark, obviously I need to ask you what did you find and what are the implications of what you found?
00:25:57:04 - 00:26:21:13
Mark Morrison
Well, what we found was really interesting. So we found that, as has been mentioned before, there are what are called acute effects and long-term effects. So for the pristine plastics and we were looking at the common ones like PET and polyethylene, there was very little effect over an acute period, a short period of time. When we looked at these, when they were contaminated.
00:26:21:13 - 00:26:57:00
Mark Morrison
So the microplastics contaminated with bacteria, we started to see changes in the cell responses in our models. And that was particularly prominent in the model of the gastrointestinal tract and the ones which reflected people that had gastrointestinal disorders. So cell responses were quite changed in those. And we also saw that in those circumstances, that bacteria that were sticking to the microplastics had a much higher incidence of genetic transfer between bacteria.
00:26:57:00 - 00:27:19:22
Mark Morrison
So this could have implications for antibiotic resistance spread. For the nanoplastics that we coated with different chemicals, we saw that the effects on the cell models that we looked at were much higher with that combination than with either the nanoplastic or the chemical on its own. So the plastic particles, in effect, a Trojan horse taking the chemical.
00:27:19:23 - 00:27:25:24
Abigail Acton
So the combination was much more potent than each individual aspect. And did you see any effect on the gut microbiome?
00:27:26:00 - 00:27:45:01
Mark Morrison
Yeah. So the gut microbiome was changed in terms of how it metabolised foods. So that means that people that have got digestive disorders, they're being exposed to plastics that might have a long term effect in their gut microbiome, might have a long term effect in the way they're able to digest food.
00:27:45:02 - 00:27:52:10
Abigail Acton
Okay. Fascinating. Okay. Does anyone have any observations to make to Mark? Yeah. Luca, what would you like to mention?
00:27:52:12 - 00:28:13:24
Luca Nizzetto
Yes. Thank you. My research unfolds in the context of the agrifood. And for me, there is an interesting point of discussion here. The gut brain axis is a complex multi-organ system in our body that links the gut, its microbiota, the immune system and the brain, while they gut is also a major entry route for micro and nanoplastic.
00:28:14:00 - 00:28:29:17
Luca Nizzetto
And this raises the possibility that gut exposure may have indirect effects extending beyond the intestine, right? influencing immune and brain function. Is there any evidence of such indirect systemic effects?
00:28:29:19 - 00:28:55:23
Mark Morrison
Yeah. So we do see that micro and nanoplastics are taken up by immune cells surrounding the gut, and there is transfer into different systemic systems. We didn't go as far as looking at blood brain barrier and how micro or nanoplastics can transfer across that, but that is something that would definitely be a worthwhile research avenue for the future to look up.
00:28:56:00 - 00:29:15:13
Mark Morrison
And certainly something that the CUSP projects, we collaborated very effectively together, and we looked at what should be done to fill in the knowledge gaps that Alba also mentioned. So we developed a roadmap that we believe the European Commission should follow to fill in these knowledge caps.
00:29:15:14 - 00:29:34:09
Abigail Acton
Well, that's an excellent spot at which to end these interviews. And for me to thank you sincerely for the very important work that you're doing. Here's hoping that your voices are heard. Thank you very much for joining me today. It's been a real, I would say, pleasure. It has been a pleasure. But you know what I mean when I put that in inverted commas.
00:29:34:14 - 00:29:36:22
Abigail Acton
Okay. Thank you for your time.
00:29:37:00 - 00:29:38:03
Luca Nizzetto
Thank you very much.
00:29:38:03 - 00:29:39:16
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Thank you. Thank you very much.
00:29:39:17 - 00:29:43:00
Mark Morrison
Thank you. Abigail, Luca and Alba. Bye .
00:29:43:03 - 00:29:46:01
Speaker 5
00:29:46:03 - 00:30:20:12
Abigail Acton
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00:30:20:14 - 00:30:40:10
Abigail Acton
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This is an AI transcription.
00:00:16:03 - 00:00:43:02
Abigail Acton
Hello. Welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery with me, Abigail Acton. Many of us are looking over our shoulders uneasily at the idea of the amount of nano and microplastics in our environment, so if you're asking yourself what the impact might be, listen on. The exponential increase in the production and use of plastics translates into an increase of the environmental plastic waste, which is continually degraded into smaller and smaller particles.
00:00:43:05 - 00:01:13:24
Abigail Acton
Tire ware, textiles breaking down, plastics used in agriculture or just abandoned litter: a handful of examples of the multiple ways plastic weaves its way into our environment to be found in drinking water, air and the food chain through soil. While the presence of microplastics in the ocean has been extensively studied over the past few decades, the existence of microplastics in soil has only recently become a major topic of research, and that research is showing that plants are altered by exposure.
00:01:14:00 - 00:01:45:12
Abigail Acton
Substantial physiological responses in plants to microplastics have been recorded, so these include, for example, a decline in chlorophyl and elevated levels of stress hormones found both in lab and field crops due to the presence of microplastics in soil. Despite recent efforts to assess the risks to people associated with micro and nano plastics, we still don't know enough. One reason for that is the lack of reliable, validated methods that are able to generate the science based data we need.
00:01:45:14 - 00:02:09:20
Abigail Acton
Our guests today, whose work has been supported by EU research and innovation funding, can give us a better understanding of what's going on. Luca Nizzetto is chief scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Water Research, in Oslo. He has coordinated pioneering international research on plastic pollution in agricultural ecosystems, revealing the widespread occurrence of microplastics and their impact on soil fertility and crops.
00:02:09:21 - 00:02:11:12
Abigail Acton
Hello, Luca. Welcome.
00:02:11:14 - 00:02:14:04
Luca Nizzetto
Hi. Thank you very much. I'm very happy to be here.
00:02:14:04 - 00:02:29:18
Abigail Acton
We're happy to have you here. Alba Hernandez is a professor of Genetics and the leader of the Mutagenesis Group at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She's particularly interested in how emerging contaminants may contribute to long-term human health effects. Welcome, Alba.
00:02:29:20 - 00:02:34:05
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Hello, everybody. Really nice for me to be here with you.
00:02:34:07 - 00:02:44:22
Abigail Acton
Mark Morrison is a senior consultant with Optima, in Glasgow. He focuses on the way in which living organisms can be used in the development of new, sustainable processes. Hello, Mark.
00:02:44:24 - 00:02:48:04
Mark Morrison
Hi, Abigail. Really pleased to be here with everybody else.
00:02:48:06 - 00:03:03:17
Abigail Acton
Super. Okay, Luca, I'm going to turn to you. The PAPILLONS project set out to improve our understanding of the impact plastics used in agriculture have on the environment as they break down. So Luca why this area of research. What drew you to the subject?
00:03:03:19 - 00:03:26:22
Luca Nizzetto
Well. After beginning of my career in the Italian Navy, training to become a naval officer at the age of 20, I realised that my deepest motivation was actually directed towards nature rather than weapons. I therefore moved into the natural sciences, fully aware that we are living to one of the most serious environmental crisis in the history of the planet.
00:03:26:24 - 00:03:43:08
Luca Nizzetto
Real war if you want. This was caused by climate change, biodiversity and pollution. I choose to focus on pollution, possibly the less understood among these causes, and also obviously a driver of human health impairment.
00:03:43:12 - 00:03:44:17
Abigail Acton
Absolutely.
00:03:44:19 - 00:04:01:14
Luca Nizzetto
Pollution takes many forms and includes plastic and microplastic, as you correctly introduced. And during the last ten years, my contribution has been mainly in research in microplastic interstellar environment. And this was at the time a new branch in this area.
00:04:01:15 - 00:04:09:13
Abigail Acton
Okay. Super. So when we say environmental plastics, what do we currently understand by that term? Let's really clarify what we're talking about today.
00:04:09:14 - 00:04:26:23
Luca Nizzetto
Yes. Well each year 60 to 80 million tonnes of mismanaged plastic enter the terrestrial environment. And this is a lot of plastic. This can be, for example, containing about 3 million standard containers like those transported by cargo ships around the world.
00:04:26:23 - 00:04:28:03
Abigail Acton
Wow.
00:04:28:05 - 00:04:39:15
Luca Nizzetto
Plastic pollution is therefore not just a waste problem. It is a process of planetary relevance. These plastics that reach the environment are called environmental plastics.
00:04:39:20 - 00:05:12:17
Luca Nizzetto
Most of them are currently present as large debris like litter, mismanaged waste or illegally disposed waste. But fragmentation into micro nano plastic is inevitable. These particles are persistent and mobile, and they can become widely geographically distributed, with soil acting as an important, maybe a global major recipient. Microplastic can affect soil and plant health. Small microplastic and nano plastic can accumulate in plants after entering through the roots.
00:05:12:18 - 00:05:18:00
Luca Nizzetto
They reach edible parts in this way. Also, they reach the human food chain.
00:05:18:02 - 00:05:30:08
Abigail Acton
Okay, that's a very clear explanation. It's a huge quantity. Really a huge quantity. So what did PAPILLONS do to gain a better understanding of the impact through agriculture on human health?
00:05:30:09 - 00:05:57:12
Luca Nizzetto
Of course, thanks to the support from the Horizon Framework program, we were able to join forces among 20 European research institutes to shed light for the first time on the sources, occurrence and impacts of microplastic in agriculture at European scale. For example, we develop methods to quantify how much plastic and what type of plastic is used in agriculture in different regions of Europe.
00:05:57:16 - 00:06:08:09
Luca Nizzetto
Creating a European atlas of agricultural plastic waste that help estimating exposure risks, but also help planning better waste management options.
00:06:08:11 - 00:06:20:22
Abigail Acton
And is this atlas - it's a lovely description of the product - is this something that people can consult and take a look at? Anybody can look at? Or is this something that's really just for, you know, other scientists and a closed group?
00:06:20:24 - 00:06:40:17
Luca Nizzetto
Of course we have a link through our web page and this is accessible. People, anyone can explore and try to get a glimpse of what is the amount of plastic in their own region, for example. The Atlas can be found in our web page papillons-h2020.eu.
00:06:40:19 - 00:06:46:20
Abigail Acton
Okay. And that's PAPILLONS, P A P I L L O N S, correct?
00:06:46:21 - 00:06:47:18
Luca Nizzetto
Correct.
00:06:47:19 - 00:06:56:21
Abigail Acton
Lovely. Okay, so you've got this wonderful atlas that can show people the distribution of this problematic plastic. What else did the project do?
00:06:56:23 - 00:07:45:11
Luca Nizzetto
Yes, of course we could, for example, design very sophisticated experiments in laboratory equipped to reproduce environmental condition to understand how plastic move within soil and from soil and how do they are accumulated or effect soil, organism and plants. We could also design very large experiments in real agricultural fields simultaneously in southern, central and northern Europe, where we artificially added microplastics to soil in a controlled way to study over the long term, for example, two years or more changes in soil health, fertility and plant performance, as well as the nutritional characteristic of crops affected by plastic.
00:07:45:15 - 00:08:17:21
Luca Nizzetto
Finally, and importantly, we also managed to run the first large scale European monitoring of microplastic in agricultural soils, overcoming several technical problems linked to the challenging analysis of identifying and measuring these tiny particles in soil. You can imagine that is like finding needles in a haystack. But we manage visiting over 70 locations across all Europe and providing the first overview of how contaminated is Europe by these contaminants.
00:08:17:22 - 00:08:30:03
Abigail Acton
Okay, sounds a very in depth approach, and also as if you found some rather important results. So could you tell us a little bit more about what you actually established through these experiments?
00:08:30:05 - 00:09:10:20
Luca Nizzetto
Of course, we found that microplastics are unfortunately already widespread in European soils, with hotspots containing as much as 0.1 to 0.8% of plastic in soil by weight. And this is a very high concentration above effect levels. The use of plastic in agriculture is an important source of this pollution, but it is not the only one: fertilization with sewage sludge or contaminated compost, as well as diffuse atmospheric deposition of airborne small plastic particles may, in some locations, represent the dominant sources.
00:09:10:22 - 00:09:27:18
Luca Nizzetto
We also found that soil properties can be affected by this pollution already at environmentally plausible levels. In particular, microplastics interfere with the cycling of nutrient at the field level, which is a crucial for soil fertility.
00:09:27:21 - 00:09:30:06
Abigail Acton
And what does this mean as a result?
00:09:30:08 - 00:09:58:15
Luca Nizzetto
Well, it means that in order to retain performance in food production in agriculture, farmers may have to set in place different practices or treat their soil in a different way, especially in a future perspective, when those levels will increase. We need to remember this sad fact. We are maybe at the beginning of an increasing trajectory.
00:09:58:16 - 00:10:16:18
Abigail Acton
So I mean, actually, that ties in very well to my last question. I mean, as you say, we already know that there are large amounts of plastics that have yet to break down. So with regards to your research and what you found, how do you hope that this will filter into policy making? How do you believe that this could perhaps change things or make things better?
00:10:16:19 - 00:11:00:04
Luca Nizzetto
Yeah, of course. This finding opens a concern for the future of food safety and food security as well. When we are talking about effects on soil fertility, which we should remember that, as we just said, microplastic will increase in future. Small microplastics are up taken by crops. And this becomes also a concern for human health. And so the policy needs to embrace the one health approach, where the protection of the environment and the protection of human health are seen as an integrated issue.
00:11:00:08 - 00:11:08:19
Abigail Acton
Super. I understand that your findings have actually already been delivered to some policymakers. How is it feeding into recent papers on this subject?
00:11:08:22 - 00:11:52:09
Luca Nizzetto
Yes, we were very actively involved in dialogs with the European Commission and that demonstrated to be attentive to the development and the discoveries of this project. So while we were really operating alongside the parallel development of the policy framework for the soil protection, the so-called soil monitoring law, we could really last minute, just a few days before the final approval of the law, to make sure that microplastics were mentioned in the policy as critical soil contaminants that need to be considered in future regulations and monitoring actions.
00:11:52:09 - 00:11:53:18
Abigail Acton
Excellent.
00:11:53:19 - 00:11:58:16
Luca Nizzetto
We're very happy that we managed to achieve this initial impact.
00:11:58:17 - 00:12:11:07
Abigail Acton
No, that's excellent. And it's a concrete outcome of the project, something I'm sure you will be feeling proud about. Super. Thank you so much. That was an excellent explanation. Thank you Luca. Does anyone have any questions or observations to make to Luca? Yes. Alba.
00:12:11:11 - 00:12:25:09
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Yeah. Maybe I would ask Luca: according to your expertise, what do you think is the most important challenge nowadays, methodologically speaking, to understand the exposure, quantify the exposure in the environment.
00:12:25:13 - 00:13:02:13
Luca Nizzetto
Yes. Thank you very much. And there is a clear challenge and that is the elevated cost of running monitoring studies. Analysing microplastic in soils costs about €1,500 per sample. And this is a strong limiting factor to set in place routine monitoring at national level for example. So we need to streamline this and to support the implementation of the upcoming environmental protection regulation.
00:13:02:14 - 00:13:19:01
Abigail Acton
Could AI help with that? I mean, sometimes we have people on the program that talk about mass spectrometry for picking out sort of, you know, chemical compositions within a wider context. I mean, if you could run some sort of sensor and then have it interpreted by AI, would that not make things much quicker and easier?
00:13:19:02 - 00:13:41:22
Luca Nizzetto
Yes, indeed. There are different techniques that can be utilised to detect these microplastics. One of them utilise mass spectrometry, and this promise to be faster and more efficient way to do that. In reality, plastics are mostly made of carbon hydrogen, similar to most organic components of soils.
00:13:41:24 - 00:13:42:14
Abigail Acton
Ah, yes.
00:13:42:15 - 00:13:48:15
Luca Nizzetto
So it's still very difficult to have a clean signal which is univocally related to plastic.
00:13:48:16 - 00:13:50:19
Abigail Acton
Yes, that muddies the waters a little bit.
00:13:50:20 - 00:14:20:15
Luca Nizzetto
Yes. On the other hand, the approach we use is through sophisticated microscopes which utilise infrared spectroscopy. They can simultaneously recognise the polymer, tell us about the shape and the color of the plastic. And this is crucial to identify for example the sources which tell us what is the priority, what should we focus to curb further pollution.
00:14:20:19 - 00:14:38:13
Abigail Acton
Perfect. Oh that's excellent. That's interesting. It's very interesting to know what tools you're actually using to look for them. And the idea of being able to identify the sources. Of course. Very important. Thank you very much. Luca Alba, I'm going to turn to you now by combining the use of breakthrough research and validated test methods,
00:14:38:14 - 00:14:52:08
Abigail Acton
PLASTICHEAL established solid scientific evidence of how environmental microplastics interact with our bodies. So now we've heard about the fact that there is a lot of plastic out there. What is it actually doing it to us? Alba.
00:14:52:10 - 00:15:22:17
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Yeah. Actually there's a lot of information already of how much microplastic may be in the environment, but there's still a lot of information missing on what this microplastic may actually do inside our bodies. We know that people are continuously exposed to this microplastic through the air they breath, the food they eat, the water they drink. So the question is what the exposure may mean for human health over time.
00:15:22:19 - 00:15:49:24
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
For responding to this question, size really matters in the context because many microplastics are too large to cross the body natural barriers. This is the lungs and the gut. But nanoplastics are small enough to potentially pass, transferred from the lungs to the gut into the bloodstream and then from the bloodstream, spread throughout the body to the different organs where they may accumulate over time.
00:15:50:00 - 00:15:50:11
Abigail Acton
Okay.
00:15:50:12 - 00:15:59:22
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
So that is why I became particularly interested in nanoplastics, so the smallest ones and the possible long-term effects.
00:16:00:01 - 00:16:07:14
Abigail Acton
So super. So yeah, clearly that's something that needs to be looked at. So what did PLASTICHEAL do to try and understand the connection?
00:16:07:15 - 00:16:36:08
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
So one thing that we have tried to do is to reproduce very well what are the exposure conditions that are closer to real life. Many laboratory studies expose cells to very high concentrations of microplastics for a short period of time. This is very useful to understand whether microplastics are toxic or not, but it may not really reflect what happens in everyday life, where people are exposed to much lower levels over many years.
00:16:36:08 - 00:16:50:23
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
So we have tried to develop long-term advanced laboratory models using human cells, and then we have exposed these cells to low concentrations of nanoplastics for extended periods and monitor what happened over time.
00:16:50:24 - 00:16:51:09
Abigail Acton
Okay.
00:16:51:10 - 00:17:01:22
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
And in this scenario we focus on two types of cells: one was epithelial cells that are the cells that are in the lining or the or the organs,
00:17:01:24 - 00:17:28:04
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
the first encountering the contaminant. And then also in stem cells that are long living cells that are there to renew tissues throughout the whole life. So in these settings we looked at several biological processes after exposing these cells over time. And we examined, for instance, where the genes are being switched on or off differently.
00:17:28:05 - 00:17:45:07
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
whether DNA damage accumulates, where the cells change the way they grow or the way they communicate with each other. And whether they begin to acquire characteristics that we normally associate with early stages of cancer development.
00:17:45:08 - 00:17:49:06
Abigail Acton
Okay. That's very interesting. And what did you find, Alba?
00:17:49:07 - 00:18:16:09
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Well, actually, what is one of the most interesting things that we found is that even at these low concentration, low doses that are realistic doses that we can encounter in the environment, we see how these epithelial cells and these stem cells start behaving differently at the molecular level. So their genes and some of their biological processes change due to the chronic long-term exposure.
00:18:16:10 - 00:18:26:18
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
And then the cells stop behaving like healthy cells and start behaving more like we associate with tumoral phenotype, tumor-like cells.
00:18:26:20 - 00:18:34:06
Abigail Acton
Okay. But obviously just to clarify, we're not saying necessarily that there is a connection directly between exposure and cancer.
00:18:34:07 - 00:19:05:24
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Yeah, actually science is never that simple. This is not a clear connection with nanoplastic exposure and cancer. But what it is important is that we are observing an association of alterations of biological processes that are somehow connected with cancer. So even it's not a direct connection. It is some hints that we need to explore more deeply. What happens after long-term exposure is a clear indication that we should look more at this realistic.
00:19:05:24 - 00:19:11:04
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
What happens to the cells, to the tissues under these realistic exposure conditions.
00:19:11:06 - 00:19:13:08
Abigail Acton
Right. So clearly there is disruption.
00:19:13:09 - 00:19:14:00
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Yes
00:19:14:01 - 00:19:20:24
Abigail Acton
Okay. If we think of future generations, Alba, what do you think are the key points to consider from your project area?
00:19:21:01 - 00:19:51:22
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Many times I think of what I call the endless cycle of environmental contaminants. So typically we have observed this with many contaminants. There is a product that is released claiming that is safe. Then it comes into our everyday products. It starts spreading into the environment and much, much later, like 10, 20 years later, we start observing that it may be harmful to our health and then we start to take action.
00:19:51:23 - 00:20:20:15
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
And for me, what it is important, I think that this is what we are now observing for micro and nanoplastics. We are now realising that they may be harmful. And what I would like is my results to stop somehow breaking this cycle and shorten the time we need to really take action, if we observe that these micro and nanoplastics are really a problem to our health.
00:20:20:16 - 00:20:30:13
Abigail Acton
Excellent. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much for the important work and for a very clear explanation. Much appreciated. Does anyone have any observations to make to Alba, please? Yes, Mark.
00:20:30:15 - 00:20:31:05
Mark Morrison
Hi, Alba.
00:20:31:06 - 00:20:31:17
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Hi.
00:20:31:21 - 00:20:42:04
Mark Morrison
Did you see any differences with different types of plastics? So you looked at lots of different nanoplastics. Were any different polymers worse than others?
00:20:42:05 - 00:21:10:13
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Yeah. That is a really interesting and relevant question because we have used in this attempt to reproduce the realistic scenario. We have used different nanoplastics. Some of them are like very similar to what we found in the environment. These plastics came for instance, from the release from plastic bottles or teabags for instance. And these resemble very well the characteristics of what we have found in the environment.
00:21:10:13 - 00:21:42:19
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
And some other plastics that we have used are more artificial, let's say, not really resembling what we found in the environment. And we have observed that those plastics that are more closely resembling what's in nature are the ones that are affecting the cells more. So there is a connection on how much realistic is the material and how much important, relevant are the results that we are obtaining.
00:21:42:20 - 00:22:01:09
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
So I think that it is also very important that the community, the scientific field, focusses on these realistic micro and nanoplastics only and leave aside all those test materials that are not similar to what we find in the environment.
00:22:01:14 - 00:22:18:08
Abigail Acton
Okay. Super. Thank you very much, Alba. That's wonderful. Mark, I am going to turn to you now. PlasticsFatE also considered how we're responding to micro and nanoparticles in our environment. But Mark, your project was looking at the impact of microplastics on the human body with a slightly different approach. Can you tell me more about that?
00:22:18:10 - 00:22:45:21
Mark Morrison
Yeah. Sure can. Abigail. So we wanted to understand how micro and nanoplastics or MNPs as I'll called them in the rest of this short talk and behave in the real world, not just in lab conditions. So in practice, in the real world, as we've heard from the other speakers, and they're never pristine. They're they're coated in different things, so coated in biological contaminants and chemical contaminants.
00:22:45:21 - 00:23:13:08
Mark Morrison
And you just have to look at plastics that you find in a beach or in a field or whatever. They're quite often dirty or oily, whatever. And we were interested in what are the effects from the plastics and what are the effects of the plastic plus contaminants. And we also as Alba has mentioned, we were interested in what are the differences with different types of plastics so we're exposed to PET from plastic bottles, polyethylene from packaging.
00:23:13:08 - 00:23:46:07
Mark Morrison
What happens when they are broken down into different sizes or microsize and nanosized particles? What happens if there are different shapes? And we looked at them in both terms of pristine conditions, so as you would find them in a pure product, and then we contaminated them. So the microplastics we coated them in bacteria that you can find in marine environments, lake environments, brackish waters, the nanoplastics we coated them in chemicals that are quite often used in plastic manufacturing.
00:23:46:07 - 00:24:12:16
Mark Morrison
And we studied these in cell systems, cell systems that replicated what are the normal routes or the most common routes for people to be exposed to. So we looked primarily at the gastrointestinal tract, and we also looked at respiratory airways. And we measured the effects of these particles in terms of changes in gene expression and in changes in protein activity.
00:24:12:18 - 00:24:32:17
Abigail Acton
It sounds very in-depth and also much needed because clearly it's an approach that looks at the realistic situation in which we can find ourselves, the parts of our body that really might be impacted by bits of plastic contaminated with things that realistically, could be there. Has this been done before? Because it seems like a logical thing to do?
00:24:32:19 - 00:24:59:19
Mark Morrison
Perhaps not at this level. So one of the big contributions of PlasticsFatE, along with other projects, so we were part of a cluster of five projects that were funded under the same call, part of the CUSP cluster to bring more consistency to this approach. So harmonisation was a key word here. So a number of the researchers that were involved in our project and other projects had worked with engineered nanomaterials in the past.
00:24:59:19 - 00:25:23:06
Mark Morrison
And the early days of that research had revealed quite different results, because effectively, the researchers that were looking at the engineered nanomaterials were using different types of materials. They hadn't been well characterized, and they were using different methods that they were getting different results. So we started from the premise that we wanted to have a set of well characterised materials.
00:25:23:06 - 00:25:43:22
Mark Morrison
So we took different types of plastics, we made different sizes of them, we made different shapes of them, and we characterised them really well. And then we use those sets in all of our experiments. So we were then able to reflect on the results and what was due to the plastic type, size, shape and the contaminant that we were looking at.
00:25:43:23 - 00:25:44:14
Abigail Acton
Excellent.
00:25:44:16 - 00:25:46:00
Mark Morrison
And the combination of the two.
00:25:46:02 - 00:25:56:23
Abigail Acton
That sounds very comprehensive. And yeah, the standardisation clearly is really important. Otherwise you don't know whether you're comparing like with like. So Mark, obviously I need to ask you what did you find and what are the implications of what you found?
00:25:57:04 - 00:26:21:13
Mark Morrison
Well, what we found was really interesting. So we found that, as has been mentioned before, there are what are called acute effects and long-term effects. So for the pristine plastics and we were looking at the common ones like PET and polyethylene, there was very little effect over an acute period, a short period of time. When we looked at these, when they were contaminated.
00:26:21:13 - 00:26:57:00
Mark Morrison
So the microplastics contaminated with bacteria, we started to see changes in the cell responses in our models. And that was particularly prominent in the model of the gastrointestinal tract and the ones which reflected people that had gastrointestinal disorders. So cell responses were quite changed in those. And we also saw that in those circumstances, that bacteria that were sticking to the microplastics had a much higher incidence of genetic transfer between bacteria.
00:26:57:00 - 00:27:19:22
Mark Morrison
So this could have implications for antibiotic resistance spread. For the nanoplastics that we coated with different chemicals, we saw that the effects on the cell models that we looked at were much higher with that combination than with either the nanoplastic or the chemical on its own. So the plastic particles, in effect, a Trojan horse taking the chemical.
00:27:19:23 - 00:27:25:24
Abigail Acton
So the combination was much more potent than each individual aspect. And did you see any effect on the gut microbiome?
00:27:26:00 - 00:27:45:01
Mark Morrison
Yeah. So the gut microbiome was changed in terms of how it metabolised foods. So that means that people that have got digestive disorders, they're being exposed to plastics that might have a long term effect in their gut microbiome, might have a long term effect in the way they're able to digest food.
00:27:45:02 - 00:27:52:10
Abigail Acton
Okay. Fascinating. Okay. Does anyone have any observations to make to Mark? Yeah. Luca, what would you like to mention?
00:27:52:12 - 00:28:13:24
Luca Nizzetto
Yes. Thank you. My research unfolds in the context of the agrifood. And for me, there is an interesting point of discussion here. The gut brain axis is a complex multi-organ system in our body that links the gut, its microbiota, the immune system and the brain, while they gut is also a major entry route for micro and nanoplastic.
00:28:14:00 - 00:28:29:17
Luca Nizzetto
And this raises the possibility that gut exposure may have indirect effects extending beyond the intestine, right? influencing immune and brain function. Is there any evidence of such indirect systemic effects?
00:28:29:19 - 00:28:55:23
Mark Morrison
Yeah. So we do see that micro and nanoplastics are taken up by immune cells surrounding the gut, and there is transfer into different systemic systems. We didn't go as far as looking at blood brain barrier and how micro or nanoplastics can transfer across that, but that is something that would definitely be a worthwhile research avenue for the future to look up.
00:28:56:00 - 00:29:15:13
Mark Morrison
And certainly something that the CUSP projects, we collaborated very effectively together, and we looked at what should be done to fill in the knowledge gaps that Alba also mentioned. So we developed a roadmap that we believe the European Commission should follow to fill in these knowledge caps.
00:29:15:14 - 00:29:34:09
Abigail Acton
Well, that's an excellent spot at which to end these interviews. And for me to thank you sincerely for the very important work that you're doing. Here's hoping that your voices are heard. Thank you very much for joining me today. It's been a real, I would say, pleasure. It has been a pleasure. But you know what I mean when I put that in inverted commas.
00:29:34:14 - 00:29:36:22
Abigail Acton
Okay. Thank you for your time.
00:29:37:00 - 00:29:38:03
Luca Nizzetto
Thank you very much.
00:29:38:03 - 00:29:39:16
Alba Hernandez Bonilla
Thank you. Thank you very much.
00:29:39:17 - 00:29:43:00
Mark Morrison
Thank you. Abigail, Luca and Alba. Bye .
00:29:43:03 - 00:29:46:01
Speaker 5
00:29:46:03 - 00:30:20:12
Abigail Acton
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00:30:20:14 - 00:30:40:10
Abigail Acton
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Plastic particles: how many are out there and what are they doing to our bodies and the environment?
Tyre wear, textiles breaking down, plastics used in agriculture or abandoned litter: just a handful of examples of the multiple ways plastic weaves its way into our environment, to be found in drinking water, air and the food chain through soil. While the presence of microplastics in the ocean has been extensively studied over the past few decades, the existence of microplastics in soil has only recently become a major topic of research. And that research is showing plants are altered by exposure – substantial physiological responses in plants to microplastics have been recorded. And the impact this is having on our health? Despite recent efforts to assess the risk to people associated with micro(nano) plastics, we still don’t know enough. One reason for that is the lack of reliable, validated methods able to generate the science-based data we need. Our guests today, whose work has been supported by EU research and innovation funding, can give us a better understanding of what’s going on. Luca Nizzetto(opens in new window) is chief scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Water Research(opens in new window), in Oslo. He has coordinated pioneering international research on plastic pollution in agricultural ecosystems, revealing the widespread occurrence of microplastics and their impact on soil fertility and crops. Nizzetto coordinated the PAPILLONS project. Alba Hernández Bonilla(opens in new window) is a professor of Genetics and the leader of the Mutagenesis Group(opens in new window) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona(opens in new window). She is particularly interested in how emerging contaminants may contribute to long-term human health effects, which she explored in the PLASTICHEAL project. Mark Morrison(opens in new window), who coordinated the PlasticsFatE project, is a senior consultant with Optimat(opens in new window), in Glasgow. He focuses on the ways in which living organisms can be used in the development of new, sustainable processes.
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Keywords
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Spain, Norway, United Kingdom