Scientists Issue Serious Warning for People Who Eat Takeaway Foods Packed in Plastic Containers

What is the most pervading life-sustaining ingredient on Earth? If someone had asked this question a century ago, a scientist would have answered carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. But now, the answer seems to have changed to "plastic." The only difference, it’s not life-sustaining. It’s life-stealing. From fish and turtles in oceans to bears in the polar ice caps, from cosmetics to fruits and vegetables, from breast milk to liver, plastic particles are everywhere, according to AAMC. A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed evidence of microplastics in blood clots within the human brain, heart, and legs.

Concerned and curious about this research, epidemiologist Yueping Wu and his fellow researchers from China decided to experiment. For days and months, they prepared boiled water leached with plastic particles, and then fed them to a party of rats. In a report published in Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, they shared how the plastic particles not only disrupted the innards of rats’ bodies but also damaged their heart muscles. The findings didn’t necessarily state that plastics could have the same effect on human bodies, but there is a great possibility that they do, especially the plastics that come from disposable plastic containers used in takeaway food packaging.

This study, conducted by researchers from China, adds another piece to the mounting evidence that plastic poses a deadly risk to the human heart. “The data revealed that high-frequency exposure to plastics is significantly associated with an increased risk of congestive heart failure,” they wrote in the study. The study was conducted in two parts. In the first part, the team analyzed over 3,000 people in China who ate from plastic takeout containers to see whether they had any heart disease.

In the second part, they boiled water by leaching and squeezing plastic chemicals into the water. They leeched these chemicals by dipping plastic containers in hot water for durations of one, five, and fifteen minutes on a repetitive basis. Assaulted by the extreme heat, the plastic containers, containing over 20,000 ingredients, released chemicals like BPA, phthalates, and various plasticizers. For the next few months, the researchers gave this water contaminated with leachates to rats. Afterwards, they investigated their poop to check if there were any changes in gut biome and metabolites. The changes were there indeed, some remarkable ones.

“It indicated that ingestion of these leachates altered the intestinal microenvironment, affected gut microbiota composition, and modified gut microbiota metabolites, particularly those linked to inflammation and oxidative stress,” the researchers explained in the study. Additionally, there’s a litany of studies that have shown how these notorious microplastics spill their deadly chemicals into the food we eat and the air we breathe. One study showed that microwaving food in plastic containers can release as many as billions of plastic particles into the food, which can be directly linked to cardiovascular diseases.

The study, though, doesn’t advise or recommend people on whether or not to use plastics. But it surely is a warning sign that people can give thought to, and reduce their plastic usage, and instead shift to glass or steel containers. So the next time you are about to eat those noodles from a plastic container or slurp juice from a plastic cup, rethink whether it is really worth it.