• 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

  • What Astrobiology Might Tell Us About What Aliens May Look Like
  • Voyager: An Inside Look At NASA’s Longest-Running Mission With Someone There From The Start
  • Meet Alba: The World’s Only Known Albino Orangutan Still Living In Borneo
  • Yikes! Baby African Social Spiders Filmed Eating Their Moms Start-To-Finish For The First Time
  • Why Is The Great Rift Valley So Important In Our Understanding Of Human Evolution?
  • 6th Strongest Earthquake On Record – An Incredible 8.8 Magnitude – Triggers Tsunamis And Volcanic Eruption
  • Avoid These 7 Common Objects That Can “Wreck” Your Wi-Fi Signal
  • “The Blob” Triggered The Largest Single-Species Event In Modern History, Killing 4 Million Seabirds
  • Someone Invited The Internet To Give “One Good Reason” The Magnet Truck Won’t Work, And They Absolutely Delivered
  • Earth’s Most Show-Stopping Electrical Storm Sees 280 Lightning Bolts An Hour
  • “Hot Rock” Under Appalachians Traveled From Greenland To US At 20 Kilometers Per Million Years – And Is Still Moving
  • Scientists Succeed In Capturing Elusive “Ghost Particles” Escaping Nuclear Reactor
  • Just How Many “Sixth Senses” Do We Have, Anyway?
  • No Life But Lots Of Water – Latest Observations From Controversial Planet K2-18b
  • Is The Shroud Of Turin Real Or Fake?
  • Memories Of Places “Drift” In The Brain – Even When The Environment Doesn’t Change
  • People Are Just Realizing That One Horse Is More Powerful Than One Horsepower
  • For 100 Years, A Stable 20-Electron Ferrocene Molecule Was Thought “Improbable” – Until Now
  • “I Saved A PNG Image To A Bird”: YouTuber Stores 176KB Drawing Of A Bird Inside A Bird’s Song
  • The Falkland Islands Wolf: The Tragic Tale Of The First Known Canid Humans Drove To Extinction
  • 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