Are our bodies full of microplastics or not? There's a way to resolve this debate, and scientists must hurry | Debora MacKenzie

"For many months, the Guardian has reported a series of worrying scientific results that our bodies are full of jagged microplastic particles that could be giving us everything from heart attacks to reproductive problems. But on Tuesday, the Guardian revealed that a significant number of scientists think many of these studies showed no such thing. Or maybe they did. The methods are new and riddled with problems, so we can't always reliably tell."

"New problems present new challenges, and science takes a while to work them out. But eventually, it does. Science's unique and greatest strength is that it is self-correcting. The current battle among researchers of microplastics is the first salvo in that process. Here is how the disputes arose. Similar to the earlier cases just mentioned, as a new environmental nasty emerged, a community of specialists developed delicate, precise techniques to track the nasties and measure their impact, beyond any reasonable dispute."

Many studies report jagged microplastic particles throughout human bodies and link them to serious health problems, but a substantial number of scientists find those findings unreliable or unclear. Measurement methods for microplastics are new and often problematic, producing contested results. Historical patterns from prior environmental pollutant debates show similar early confusion before methods and consensus improved. Analytical specialists developed delicate techniques to measure pollutants precisely, while medical researchers unfamiliar with those techniques adopted them to study biological systems. The resulting methodological gaps have produced conflicting conclusions that science will need to resolve through refinement and scrutiny.

Read at www.theguardian.com