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Earth Science

First Evidence That Plastic Nanoparticles Can Accumulate in Edible Parts of Vegetables (sciencealert.com) 51

Posted by EditorDavid from the eat-your-plastics dept.
ScienceAlert writes that some of the tiny nanoplastic fragments present in soil "can make their way into the edible parts of vegetables, research has found." A team of scientists from the University of Plymouth in the UK placed radishes into a hydroponic (water-based) system containing polystyrene nanoparticles. After five days, almost 5% of the nanoplastics had made their way into the radish roots. A quarter of those were in the edible, fleshy roots, while a tenth had traveled up to the higher leafy shoots, despite anatomical features within the plants that typically screen harmful material from the soil.

"Plants have a layer within their roots called the Casparian strip, which should act as a form of filter against particles, many of which can be harmful," says physiologist Nathaniel Clark. "This is the first time a study has demonstrated nanoplastic particles could get beyond that barrier, with the potential for them to accumulate within plants and be passed on to anything that consumes them...."

There are some limitations to the study, as it didn't use a real-world farming setup. The concentration of plastics in the liquid solution is higher than estimated for soil, and only one type of plastic and one kind of vegetable were tested. Nevertheless, the basic principle stands: the smallest plastic nanoparticles can apparently sneak past protective barriers in plants, and from there into the food we eat... "There is no reason to believe this is unique to this vegetable, with the clear possibility that nanoplastics are being absorbed into various types of produce being grown all over the world," says Clark.
The research has been published in Environmental Research.
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First Evidence That Plastic Nanoparticles Can Accumulate in Edible Parts of Vegetables More

First Evidence That Plastic Nanoparticles Can Accumulate in Edible Parts of Vegetables

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  • ... our increasing reliance on plastics is only going to make it worse.
    It would most likely require formulating a new plastic that didn't have a shedding problem.
    Didn't they used to reuse glass bottles? Did we have microglass particles in our pop or beer or milk?

    • Oh don't worry. Someday everyone will try to switch to CNTs and derivatives, and those might shed too!

    • Re:Too bad... (Score:5, Informative)

      by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Sunday October 05, 2025 @05:32PM (#65705588) Homepage

      Glass is significantly more recycled than plastics. In Europe I think the numbers are over 70% of glass is recycled, as compared to around 41% for plastics. (The US numbers are lower - even in California.)

      Glass can be recycled unlimited times, while plastic tends to degrade over time. I think the main reason is that glass melts at a higher temperature and you basically burn off the labels and other crap.

      Also, glass is a compound of mostly silicon: NaâO plus CaO plus SiOâ. Note short chemical formulas and no Carbon in any of the components. That means it is inorganic, none of the components are poisonous or even similar to things found in the body. Plastics are long chains of organic chemicals containing carbon. They and the things they degrade to are VERY similar to hormones and other things naturally found in the body.

      Glass is basically safe, as long as it is not sharp. Plastic are similar to things we know cause medical problems.

      • This 'side of the pond', yeah... there's no real 'bottle return' scheme.
        If I put a case of beer bottles in the recycle dumpster behind my place, a garbage-style truck dumps it in the back and crushes it with the plastic and aluminum that's in there... even though, you could really wash the bottles to sanitize them and reuse them, as long as there's no chunks missing.
        But... there's not money to be made here in the US by reusing, in fact, you typically pay for them to pick up recycling. They grind the bottle

      • Re:Too bad... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Woeful Countenance ( 1160487 ) on Sunday October 05, 2025 @07:10PM (#65705768)

        Glass can be recycled unlimited times, while plastic tends to degrade over time.

        Glass can be recycled, but recycling doesn't save much energy compared to producing new glass (ignoring issues like transportation and waste disposal). Also generally recycled glass is always brown, unless the various colors are separated and recycled separately.

        Glass can also be reused. Back in the olden days, stores sold soda (pop [reddit.com]) and beer in glass bottles. Buyers would pay a deposit of a few cents for each bottle. The deposit could be redeemed if the bottles were returned to place of purchase. The bottling company would then collect the bottles, wash, and refill them. The bottlers considered this an extra unnecessary cost and preferred single-use plastic, so they started a big advertising campaign touting the wonders of recycling plastic, and how people shouldn't just throw their used containers out into the countryside making the fake Indian [wikipedia.org] cry.

        So now here we are, and it gets worse [insideclimatenews.org]: "Research out of Scotland suggests that the chopping, shredding and washing of plastic in recycling facilities may turn as much as six to 13 percent of incoming waste into microplastics -- tiny, toxic particles that are an emerging and ubiquitous environmental health concern for the planet and people."

      • Glass can be recycled unlimited times, while plastic tends to degrade over time. I think the main reason is that glass melts at a higher temperature and you basically burn off the labels and other crap.

        The additives in plastic are volatile. That's why they leach readily. The additives in glass aren't. They stay in the glass when you re-melt it. Both glass and plastic have to be clean before you recycle them or you get impure output.

    • They still use glass in some places. But it doesn't fit our modern sensibilities to drink from as bottle where the label has been rubbed off due to reuse. It gives moderns an icky feeling to know their Coca-Cola bottle was already drank from.

    • Synthetic fibers in high temperature laundry produces a ton, then they are blown outside to plume out for great distance. It’s traditional to grab a large handful and remove it from the filter every load. It’s not nearly as much from some litter you might see, though that does add to the problem as well.

    • Glass may seem like a solution, but in a recent study, glass bottles were found to contain more microplastics, than plastic bottles.

      https://phys.org/news/2025-06-... [phys.org]

  • Should have tested all 6 common plastics. (Score:3)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Sunday October 05, 2025 @05:13PM (#65705530) Homepage

    There really are only 6 common plastics used in the US:

    PET: Polyethylene Terephthalate (soda bottles, polyester clothing)
    HDPE: High-Density Polyethylene (Milk Jugs)
    LDPE: Low-Density Polyethylene (Plastic Bags)
    PVC: Polyvinyl Chloride (Pipes)
    PS: Polysterene (Styrofoam)
    PP: Polypropylene (car parts, medical devices)

    Pretty stupid to only test PS, when there are only 5 other commonly used.

    That said, I am seriously thinking about abandoning root vegetables. Carrots, potatoes, ginger may taste good, but they just do not seem like they are worth the risk. Stick to the stuff a bit higher up and harder to get to.

    • Did you know Jains have recommended against root vegetables since before recorded history began?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by greytree ( 7124971 )
        How do you know if it wasn't recorded ?

        Anyway, if they do eat bacon, I'm with them.

        • Have you heard of oral tradition?

      • I did not know that. Thanks for the information. Jain vegetarianism [wikipedia.org]: "The Jain cuisine is completely lacto-vegetarian and excludes root and underground vegetables such as potato, garlic, and onion to prevent injuring small insects and microorganisms. Other vegetables that have a higher chance of containing small organisms such as cauliflower, eggplant, mushroom and broccoli are also not consumed. The diet is associated with practices that aim to minimise harm to plants, such as avoiding the uprooting of ent

    • Pretty stupid to only test PS, when there are only 5 other commonly used.

      I know, right?

      I'd expect scientists with limited time and budget to do ever experiment simultaneously regardless of space constraints, equipment requirements, complexity of detection, and the scope of their mandate.

      It's truly ghastly how experts don't rely on Internet laypeople who know it all already.

    • but they just do not seem like they are worth the risk. Stick to the stuff a bit higher up and harder to get to.

      People are bad at judge risk on their own. It's just not intuitive for us humans.

      Eating vegetables exposes you to pathogen risks like Campylobacter, E. coli, Listeria, Salmonella. It would probably be best to cook your lettuce from now on, or not have it at all.

    • Adding the Resin Identification Codes used in recycling:

      PET or PETE [1]: Polyethylene Terephthalate (soda bottles, polyester clothing)
      HDPE [2]: High-Density Polyethylene (Milk Jugs)
      PVC [3]: Polyvinyl Chloride (Pipes) ... one type of vinyl ... PVC was created accidentally when flasks of vinyl chloride were exposed to direct sunlight.
      LDPE [4]: Low-Density Polyethylene (Plastic Bags)
      PP [5]: Polypropylene (car parts, medical devices)
      PS [6]: Polysterene (Styrofoam)
      Other [7]: including polycarbonate

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They probably tested polystyrene because it's used in farming.

    • While you're at it (stopping eating root vegetables) you might want to stop drinking water too. Water bottles have been found to contain a lot of microplastics. https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com] Oh, and 95% of US tap water also contains microplastics. https://www.hydroviv.com/blogs... [hydroviv.com]

  • It can contain nanoplastics.

  • Wait! What? (Score:4, Funny)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Sunday October 05, 2025 @05:23PM (#65705566)

    Vegetables are edible?

  • Could help reduce obesity: 2025 Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry [improbable.com]: "Rotem Naftalovich, Daniel Naftalovich, and Frank Greenway, for experiments to test whether eating Teflon [a form of plastic more formally called “polytetrafluoroethylene”] is a good way to increase food volume and hence satiety without increasing calorie content."

    "Polytetrafluoroethylene Ingestion as a Way to Increase Food Volume and Hence Satiety Without Increasing Calorie Content [sagepub.com]": "Animal feeding trials showed that rats fed a die

    • The reason PTFE is so good at its job is that it's very stable, so it's not surprising the rats are not metabolizing it. If they were smoking it, that would be another story. But the quantities of microplastics are so minute that they are not going to move the needle there.

      My big concern about microplastics is that they will lodge in delicate places (which we already know to be true) and then release toxic chemical compounds into their surrounds, which we know is something plastics do. For example, all plas

  • TIL (Score:3)

    by DulcetTone ( 601692 ) on Sunday October 05, 2025 @09:01PM (#65705928)

    that vegetables are edible.

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