OF PLASTICS & HUMAN PLACENTA: MEET THE "PLASTICENTA" (Pt2/4 - GUESS THE PLASTICS)

Keywords: plastics, plastic, microplastics, pollution, placenta, placentas, birth, women, pregnancy, polypropylene, PP, thermoplastic, thermosets, medicine, biology

Part 1 is here

Part 3 is here

Part 4 is here

(Read other plastic related stories here & here)

  

 

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Ooooh, hello dear English speaking-reading-hearing reader, welcome back to me, @sciencemug, the blog/podcast/twitter&instagram accounts/entity behind the unsuccessful e-shop stuffngo on zazzle.com which tells you science stories while reading the palm but yet not being able to decipher the tree, aaand which talks to you thanks to the voice, kidnapped via a voodoo-wireless trick, from a veeery very very dumb human.

Aaand which does all of this in English-question-mark, a language that is to proper English what a banana bacon muffin is to something that doesn’t scream: “human civilization is doomed!”. 

Today I’m gonna tell you the second part (the first one is here) of a story about human placentas and plastics!

Plastics symbols on plastics background (by @sciencemug)

[The plastics symbols pic by Clker-Free-Vector-Images is a free to use image (source: pixabay.com); the plastics pic by Marc Newberry is a free pic (source: Unsplash); all pics adapted by @sciencemug]

A group of Italian researchers (aka the Italian Brains, aka the ITBs) studies human placentas in search of microplastics fragments (MPs), that is plastic particles smaller than half a centimeter. In doing so, the researchers find such pollutants in the placentas of women in good health and who have had normal pregnancies and deliveries. The ITBs’ study is therefore “the first [one] revealing the presence of [...] microplastics and, in general, of man-made particles in human placenta” (P).

The Italian research team is lead by Medical Doctor Antonio Ragusa, Head of the Department of Woman, Mother and Newborn of the San Giovanni Calibíta Fatebenefratelli Hospital, in Rome, and it publishes its study (P) in the science journal Environment International.

Sooo, dear reader, in part 1 I told you about the microplastics classification story, and also about how the Italian Brains select the women involved in their study, how they design and follow a plastic free protocol to collect the placenta samples, and what kind of technique (the Raman microspectroscopy) they use to analyze such samples.

Now, all in all, the ITBs collect six placentas. Let’s remember that, from each placenta, the ITBs take and then analyze, precisely via Raman microspectroscopy, three pieces between about 20 and 30 gr of weight (the mean weight is 23.3gr). Of these three pieces, one comes from the maternal side of the placenta, one from the fetal side, and the third one from the chorioamniotic membranes, namely the two membranes that form the embryo sac, which is the structure that surrounds and protects the fetus.

Sooo, dear reader, let’s see then what the ITBs find out.

In 4 of the 6 collected placentas the researchers find a total of 12 small fragments of non-human something.

Fetus & the palstinvasion (by @sciencemug)

[Pregnant woman pic, by freestocks, is a free pic (source: Unsplash); plastics symbols pic by Clker-Free-Vector-Images is a free to use image (source: pixabay.com); all pics adapted by @sciencemug]

How small, you ask?

Well, ten fragments are about 10μm in size, while

OF PLASTICS & HUMAN PLACENTA: MEET THE "PLASTICENTA" (Pt1/4)

Keywords: plastics, plastic, microplastics, placenta, placentas, birth, pregnancy, pollution, spectroscopy, medicine, biology

Part 2 is here

Part 3 is here 

Part 4 is here

(Read other plastic related stories here & here)

Ooooh, hello dear English speaking-reading-hearing reader, welcome back to me, @sciencemug, the blog/podcast/twitter&instagram accounts/entity behind the unsuccessful e-shop stuffngo on zazzle.com which tells you science stories while trying to understand, by reading tons of zoology textbooks, if millipedes don’t wear shoes ‘cause they generally are too broke to be able to afford such a huge expense, or ‘cause they prefer flip-folps but they can’t find a good wholesale dealer to make the order to, ooor ‘cause no millipede wants to be a cobbler given the high risk of dying of a heart-attack due to constant overwork, aaand which talks to you thanks to the voice, kidnapped via a voodoo-wireless trick, from a veeery very very dumb human.

Aaand which does all of this in Eng?ish, a language that is to proper English what “ghwaahhghzzt!” is to something that make sense. 

Here I’m gonna tell you a story about human placentas and plastics!

 Listen to the podcast episode
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 Sulla plastica & la placenta umana: ecco a voi la “plasticenta” (Pt1)

 Ascolta l'episodio in italiano  

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Pieces of plastic have been found, for the first time ever, in human placentas. The placentas in question were indeed those of four healthy women who have had smooth pregnancies and deliveries.

The discovery is the result of a study, published (P) in the science journal Environment International, made by a group of Italian researchers (aka the Italian Brains aka the ITBs) led by Medical Doctor Antonio Ragusa, Head of the Department of Woman, Mother and Newborn of the San Giovanni Calibíta Fatebenefratelli Hospital, in Rome.

Soo dear reader, the story goes like this.

A bunch of researchers, in Italy, decides to investigate if there’s plastic in the placentas of pregnant women.

More precisely, Dr. Ragusa and colleagues look for microplastics, that are commonly defined as all those plastic particles that are smaller than half a centimeter.

Now, dear reader, I know you’re a fast thinker, so in your mind you just wondered why is that half a centimeter is the limit for microplastics, instead of, I dunno, two millimeters or the thickness of a hair of the bear of Masha and the Bear? Well, buddy, here’s a fun fact for you ‘bout this.

The science community

THE EXPLOSIVE STORY OF DYNAMITE & THE NOBEL PRIZE!

Ooooh, hello dear English speaking-reading-hearing listener, welcome back to me, @sciencemug, the blog/podcast/twitter&instagram accounts/entity behind the unsuccessful e-shopstuffngo on zazzle.com which tells you science stories while solving advanced equations and therefore ending up telling the equivalent of a ‘70s song played backwards and finding as a result of the equations a portrait of SpongeBob, aaand which talks to you thanks to the voice, kidnapped via a voodoo-wireless trick, from a veeery very very dumb human.

Aaand which does all of this in Eng?ish, a language that is to bad English what Avengers: Endgame is to a nasty bruise on the face of good movies history. 

Today, dear listener, I'm gonna tell you the story of a man, his most famous invention and a prize.

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(Music: Upbeat Party by Scott Holmes; licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License) 

Today in 1833 Alfred Nobel is born. You may remember him for some witty educational movies of the '50 like: "How to blast a mountain while baking cookies", or "1003 ways to lose your pinky and still count to ten". But what you may be not aware of is that the man files a patent in 1867 for an obscure invention probably only few experts know about: dynamite. 

Alfred Nobel img is a Public Domain pic source wikia.com (adapted by @sciencemug)

Now, Alfred, who's called "The Blast" by his friends for being always fun to be around to, is one of the four sons of a Swedish engineer and inventor, he gets top quality private education in natural sciences, languages and literature, and a extra training in chemical engineering. He travels around Europe (Finland, France, Russia, Germany) and the US, and, as a teenager, he is fluent (and can tell jokes that crack) in Swedish, Russian, French, English and German, basically like every average today's teenager who, yet, master also the LoL-Code and the Emoticonish.

Anyway, Alfie's youth is not all flowers and booms as his family goes through tough economical difficulties for quite some time. While father and sons try to fix things up, Alfred's mother, who comes from money, saves the day, thanks to a modest income coming from her running a grocery store where she sells milk and vegetables, till, eventually, the family's finances fully recover. 

Meanwhile in Paris Alfred has his mind blown up when

HAPPY B-DAY ASPIRIN!

Ooooh, hello dear English speaking-reading-hearing listener, welcome back to me, @sciencemug, the blog/podcast/twitter&instagram accounts which tells you science stories while thinking of opening an agency for nape models and ant-sitters, aaand which talks to you thanks to the voice kidnapped via a voodoo-wireless trick, from a veeery very very dumb dude.

Aaand which does all of this in Eng?ish, a language that is to proper English what a sidereal leap on carbon sequestration technology is to something less than vital to your species as right now.
 

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Spreaker

Today is the birthday of a tablet of which about 50 billion are swallowed each year worldwide (1). So today I will tell you the story of its genesis. Of the birth of Aspirin.

Aspirin 3D pic is a Public Domain image adapted by @sciencemug (source: wikia.com)

Aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid.

Well, to be more precise, “Aspirin” is the first commercial name of a medication which active principle is acetylsalicylic acid.

Aspirin is first put on the market by Bayer in 1899 (P), but “the first sample of pure acetylsalicylic acid [is prepared] on 10 August 1897” (P) by Doctor Felix Hoffmann, a “chemist in the pharmaceutical laboratory of the [then] German dye manufacturer Friedrich Bayer & Co in Elberfeld” (P).

The official story goes that Hoffman’s dad suffers from rheumatism, and asks his chemistry savvy son to create something better than the medicine he is presently taking, the sodium salicycate, since that drug has heavy side effects such as gastric irritation, nausea and tinnitus (which is the annoying ringing ear) (P).

Felix, then, consults “the chemical literature[, comes] across the synthesis of acetylsalicylic acid” (P), and, as above stated, makes it.

So this is what it is on the matter, and it’s all based on the account of “a footnote in a history of chemical engineering” (P) written in 1934 by Albrecht Schmidt, “a chemist [...] retired from IG Farbenindustrie—the organization into which F Bayer & Co had been incorporated in 1925” (P).

Felix Hoffmann pic is a Public Domain image adapted by @sciencemug (source: wikia.com)

The actual facts, however, are

VALENTINE'S DAY & THE BIRTH TIMING

Oooh hallo dear English hearing visitor, welcome back to me, @sciencemug, the blog/twitter account/podcast which speaks to you in Eng?ish a language that is to real English what the new Twitter timeline is to something someone really wants. Aaand that does it using the voice of a dumb human controlled via a wireless-voodoo trick. Aaaand that tells you mesmerizing science stories while, at the same time, is writing a manual about how to survive in case a pandemic of the “camomile virus”* ravage the world letting all the infected in a deep state of calm and serenity so that you suddenly find yourself in the dire situation of not having anymore anyone to fight with about how overrated and useless “Gravity” is aaaand also about your weird theory according to which “gluten free pasta” means that gluten -after corrupting pasta guards with an autographed picture of the juicy "Miss Tomato 2015" and some basil’s leaves- well, it, the gluten, manages to break free from the pasta prison and now lives, disguised as a protein bar for crossfit maniacs, in a minimarket in South Carolina.

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Weeeel this time, dear listener, you’ll hear a 2011 story appeared on the journal Social Science & Medicine. The story's about how on Valentine’s Day [the phoniest, most artificial and trivial of all the fake festivities of the world (and that’s why the dumb human created a collection of love products right for the occasion and even wrote a love e-book!)] there’s a sensible increase of child births.

- Valentine's Day post 2019 -
- Valentine's Day post 2013 -

by sNg & @sciencemug

The story goes like that. Professor Becca R. Levy, Pil H. Chung and Martin D. Slade are scientist of the School of Public Health of Yale, and they think “cultural representations, in the form of salient holidays” (Levy et al, 2011 (P)) can influence birth timing. They in fact predict that, on Valentine’s Day, spontaneous, cesarean, and induced births would peak because this day is associated with positive feelings and events like “love, flowers” (P) and the rest of the cheesy stuff (and even if the researchers don’t mention it, well, chocolate too must be one huge deal in all this births story).
 
On the contrary, then, the Becca’s science-gang foresees a decrease in spontaneous and non spontaneous births on Halloween, ‘cause of the negative associations linked to this festivity (like witches, skeletons, death, ghosts, bad movies, not so bad movies, candy induced gain of weight, candy induced dentist bills and so on and on).
 
So the Becca’s trio digs into a specific dataset. This dataset is stuffed with all the birth-certificate informations of the United States in the week before and after Valentine’s Day and Halloween in the decade between 1996 and 2006 (as Becca&co explain in the paper, they stop in 2006 ‘cause “2006 [is] the most recent data year available from the National Center for Health Statistics at the time of [their] study in 2010” (P). 
And we’re talking of big numbers here as you can imagine dear listener: almost 1 million and 7 hundred thousands births during the Valentine’s Day window, and over 1 million and 8 hundred thousands births during the Halloween’s one.
 
Soo, what  do the scientists find?
The answer after the break. 
 

It’s Valentine’s Day and you are lonely and desperate for a date? Try “Chocotenin” the innovative product which formula is a mix of the most refined cacao seeds from Ivory Coast and the secretions of the back of the most toxic frogs of Mexico.

by sciencemug

 

You’ll share the wellness that only munching chocolate can give you with what only bufotenin can offer, that is a wide range of vivid hallucinations among which, statistic says, you should also find a romantic one.
“Chocotenin”, and your Valentine’s Day will reach a whole new level of sadness!

(“Chocotenin” is also available in the form of candy bars for Halloween, eggs for Easter and whatever you want for whatever occasion/day you need it). 

 
So what do professor Becca’s and her science associates find out after checking the dataset of births in the US in correspondence of the two weeks centered on Valentine’s Day and Halloween from 1996 to 2006?
 
Weell, dear listener, the researchers find out that they are right, namely that on V-day, as respect to the week before and the one after it, births go up overall by 5%. More precisely the increase is of the 3.6% for spontaneous births, 12.1% for cesarean, and 3.4% for induced births.
 
As foreseen, besides, on Halloween the trend is

SAVE SANTA'S SHINBONE: THE HAPPY NEW YEAR POST! (PART2)

Ooooh hallo dear English speaking-thinking-reading visitor, welcome back to me @sciencemug, the blog that talks about science, the subterranean war penguins fight to overcome bunnies and become the new official Easter pets, and the pressing issue of carob addiction among the Santa’s reindeers.

Aaaand that does all of this in Eng?ish, a language that is to real English what Alien vs Predator was to a “non-commercial art driven only project”, “the soup of the day” to something one orders lightheartedly at the restaurant after having seen Fight club, aaaand homeopathy to something that actually work.

Sooo, there’re Dr. Donath and these five other scientists of the University of Basel who do an experiment to test the probability Santa Claus has to trip and fall and injury himself while doing his job on Xmas Eve.

The researchers recruit seventeen 20-40 years old, fit, healthy males for their experiment. A bunch of these guys is dressed up with Santa’s garb and handed up with a 20 kilograms [pick the joke about the metric-system AKA SI that you prefer and say it outloud three times in a row in front of a splintered mirror, then spit on your left hand and make a 180 degree turn on yourself… And realize that there’s no sense at all in it (I mean, I’m not talking of the SI, that’s absolutely rational and functional, no, I was referring to the things I mentioned after the SI)… Gee, are you always so gullible or is it just that there’s a sensible lack of oxygen in your brain since your stomach is sucking most of the blood given you’re still digesting all the food you've gulped down during the holidays?] heavy sack. This is the Santa Group (SG).  The other guys are in the Non Santa Group (NSG) and, as you can imagine, they dress normally and carry no sack.

All the volunteers take three tests, two to check their gait (a walk along a short path and a brief session on a treadmill), and one to monitor their sway (a short stand on a plate connected with sensors). The volunteers take all tests barefoot (in order to exclude anything that can alter their responses during the tests. Or, maybe, but it’s just a guess, ‘cause Donath et al’s initial idea, before it were sunk by the lack of funds, was to couple their experiment with that of a group of Lapp endocrinologists interested in determining the amount of sweat - and therefore the intensity of the stink - produced by Santa’s feet on Xmas Eve and to set, like that, the level of biohazard he represents for the children of the world exposed to high doses of his “residuals” on Xmas early morning SM’s Note).

I S.W.A.Y. (by sciencemug)

Moreover, the Donath’s volunteers go for the tests both while focusing just on them, and while doing at the same time also a