• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Nanoplastics Mess Up The Development Of Vital Organs In Chick Embryos

March 22, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

Nanoplastics are everywhere – from the food we eat to the rain that falls from the sky – and a new study has found they are capable of causing malformations in the embryos of chickens. While it’s unclear how they may be impacting human health, the researchers suggest their findings should be a cause for concern.

Scientists at Leiden University in the Netherlands investigated how polystyrene nanoplastics were impacting the development of chick embryos. To their alarm, they found that the human-made particles were linked to malformations in the heart, eyes, and nervous system. 

Advertisement

“We see malformations in the nervous system, heart, eyes, and other parts of the face,” Meiru Wang, lead study author at the Institute of Biology Leiden, said in a statement. 

“We used a high concentration of polystyrene particles, that would normally not be present in an organism. But it shows what nano-plastics can do in extreme cases on very young embryos. And it also gives us guidelines on what can happen less severely in the developmental stage,” explained Wang.

The problem is down to how nanoplastics affect neural crest cells, stem cells that are formed in the very early development of all vertebrates. The neural crest cells start in what will become the spinal cord, before migrating to help form other parts of the nervous system, as well as several vital organs, such as the arteries, heart, and face. 

The study showed that nanoplastics “passively target” the embryonic neural crest cells, sparking a chain reaction that disrupts how those cells migrate and develop.

Advertisement

“We think they stick to the neural crest cells, which causes the cells to die. Neural crest cells are sticky, so nanoparticles can adhere to them and thereby disrupt organs that depend on these cells for their development,” added Michael Richardson, Wang’s supervisor at Leiden University and study author.

“I like the metaphor of making dough. When making bread, for example, you put flour on it to make it not sticky anymore. However, in this case, it ruins the migration of the neural crest cells,” he explained. 

Mounting evidence is showing that tiny particles of plastic pollution have penetrated practically every corner of Earth’s natural environment, from the snow of Antarctica to the vital organs of humans. Nanoplastics, which this latest study defined as 25 nanometers in size, are especially concerning as they’re so small they can wheedle further into the body and cross the blood-brain barrier.

Their full impact on animal health is still not widely understood. Nevertheless, just as many suspected, a growing body of evidence is showing that both microplastics and nanoplastics are not good news. 

Advertisement

Just this month, scientists defined a new condition caused by ingesting plastic that threatens their capacity to obtain the nutrients they need to grow, which they called “plasticosis”.

As this latest study on chick embryos shows, we’re only just starting to grasp the depth of the planet’s plastic problem.

The study is published in Environment International.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. PDFs are finally set to be less annoying on Microsoft Edge
  2. Britain to say Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland are too harmful to retain
  3. Hearts From COVID-19 Patients Still Safe For Organ Transplant
  4. South Park Creators Use ChatGPT To Co-Write Episode About AI

Source Link: Nanoplastics Mess Up The Development Of Vital Organs In Chick Embryos

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • How To Fake A Fossil: Find Out More In Issue 36 Of CURIOUS – Out Now
  • Is It True Earth Used To Take 420 Days To Orbit The Sun?
  • One Of The Ocean’s “Most Valuable Habitats” Grows The Only Flowers Known To Bloom In Seawater
  • World’s Largest Digital Camera Snaps 2,104 New Asteroids In 10 Hours, Mice With 2 Dads Father Their Own Offspring, And Much More This Week
  • Simplest Explanation For “Anomalous” Signals Coming From Underneath Antarctica Ruled Out
  • “Lizard Shampoo” And Pagan Texts Suggest “Dark Age” Medicine Wasn’t So Dark After All
  • Japanese Macaques May Mourn Their Dead – As Long As They’re Not Maggot-Infested
  • This Is What You’d Hear If You Listened To Voyager’s Golden Record NASA Sent To Interstellar Space
  • RFK Jr’s New Vaccine Advisors Just Recommended Fall Flu Vaccines – But There’s A Catch
  • Controversial World-First Project To Create Human DNA From Scratch Takes First Steps
  • Humans Weren’t The First Species To Travel Around The Moon. They Lost This Race To An Unexpected Animal
  • When You Hack A Shark, You’re Exploiting A Glitch Billions Of Years In The Making
  • Wellness Whales, A New Blood Type, And A DJ Set From Space
  • Hate Flying Ants? We Used To Have Ones The Size Of Hummingbirds
  • ‘Tis The Season To See Titan Cast A Shadow On Saturn – Especially If You Are In America
  • World’s Bravest Vets Put Full Metal Dental Crown On A Bear For The First Time
  • “Spider Rain”: The Bizarre Phenomenon That’ll Send Arachnophobes Into A Spin
  • Scientists Gave Mice A Human “Language Gene” And Something Curious Unfolded
  • Surveillance Of People Is More “Pervasive And Normalised” Than Previously Thought, Endangering Our Privacy
  • US Sees 90 Percent Drop In Heart Attack Deaths Over Last 50 Years
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version