Unstoppable and irreversible! Like the problem of water, due to scarcity and contamination, as well as that of garbage, that of plastic, both due to the growing accumulation, as well as the use and abuse in the packaging of food, medicines and drinking water, within a few decades it will be a true health chaos. In fact, as is well known, disposable plastic containers, regardless of solid waste, are accumulating in all corners of the planet, especially in the sea, where the irreversible damage to marine ecosystems is already worrying.
UNAM GAZETTE. -ACADEMY. – Fernando Guzman Aguilar. He continues: This previous study, Morales Montor reported at the time, was the one that led to studying the possibility of finding bisphenol A and phthalate in human fluids and corroborating their correlation with breast cancer. Looking for bisphenol, it was found that a type of phthalates is indeed correlated with stage 4 breast cancer in Mexican patients. I am not affirming, Morales Montor clarifies, that a type of phthalates is the cause of breast cancer, but that there is a correlation with a stage of development of the pathology. Although a study in a larger sample of patients remains to be done (the pilot study was in 200 patients), these preliminary results are a call to avoid this risk factor by reducing the use of plastic products and increasing their recycling.
Q: What application could your finding have in the cancer clinic? -If this correlation is sustained in a study of thousands of patients in Mexico, the measurement of one or two of these contaminants in blood can be proposed, not as a diagnostic test, but as a predictive or prognostic tool. “It will tell you whether or not you have very high levels of dibutyl-hexyl-phthalate, and if the result is positive, you should look for alternatives to avoid exposing yourself so much.”
Unfortunately, as you know, kind reader, breast cancer continues to be the deadliest in Mexico. In 2021, there were 7,973 deaths, of which 7,925 were women and 48 men. According to INEGI, the highest death rates were registered in Mexico City, Colima, Tamaulipas, Sonora, and Chihuahua; the lowest in Quintana Roo, Guerrero, Chiapas, Oaxaca and Tlaxcala. Breast cancer is the leading cause of death from tumors in women in Mexico with 10 deaths per day on average. As a timely detection measure, the health authorities recommend that, from the age of 20, women should perform a breast self-examination at least once a month.
In the strange, but real case of men, although according to the American Cancer Society, the risk of suffering from breast cancer during the life of men is 1 in 833, compared to a probability of 1 in 8 for women . In 2019, 167 cases of breast cancer in men were registered. The types of breast cancer in men are the same as those found in women; therefore, the self-exam recommendations are the same for both. The healing treatment depends on each case and its respective stage. The risk of suffering from this terrible disease increases as age advances; most cases present after the age of 50. The UN estimates that by 2040 the number of cases will increase by 65 percent, reaching more than 323,000 people.
And while a group of Dutch scientists from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam have only found microplastics in the bloodstream of a group of healthy people, in Mexico, a multidisciplinary team discovered chemical components of microplastics in human serum that they linked to a very important disease not only in our country, but also in the world. Furthermore, the team led by Jorge Morales Montor, from UNAM’s Biomedical Research Institute, discovered, for the first time, that there is “an association of microplastic component molecules with a debilitating chronic disease: major depression.”
The team, in addition to Dr. Morales Montor, is made up of Dr. Lenin Pavón, from the National Institute of Psychiatry, Dr. Omar Amador and doctors Margarita Isabel Palacios Arreola and Karen Elizabeth Nava Castro, from the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate Change (ICA and CC) as well as dr. Mariana Segovia Mendoza from the UNAM School of Medicine. In her work “Environmental pollution to blame for depressive disorder? which was published just last February -2022- in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Heath, Mexican researchers report this important finding to the scientific community. To date, it has been downloaded more than five thousand times. The microplastic components found by Morales Montor et al. in patients with major depression are four phthalates and two bisphenols, molecules that we are breathing, drinking or eating all the time and all our lives.
Dear reader: Given such alarming results of the studies on plastic, carried out by the team of researchers from UNAM, there is nothing left but to reflect, seriously, on the urgent need to avoid, as much as possible, the daily use of all those utensils made with this material and that are used daily in all homes. Tableware, cutlery and all those dishes of daily use in the kitchen, above all, can be replaced by pieces of glass, aluminum, pewter, ceramic, wood, palm, paper and even simple baked clay. As for food and drinking water, try not to keep them in the original plastic container, as soon as possible, change them to glass or ceramic containers. To be continue… [email protected]
