我們幾乎每天都在吃塑料

Microplastics are "one of the greatest manmade disasters of our time", according to the Natural History Museum. That's bad news, given they are also everywhere; in tap water, the food you buy, the clothes you wear and the air you breathe.

倫敦自然歷史博物館認(rèn)為，微塑料是“這個(gè)時(shí)代最大的人造災(zāi)難之一”。這是個(gè)壞消息，因?yàn)槲⑺芰蠠o處不在；它存在于在自來水里，你買的食物，你穿的衣服，你呼吸的空氣中。

The largest microplastics can be seen by the naked eye and are anything under half a centimetre in size. But many of them are small enough to act like specksof dust which we can inadvertently breathe in or eat in food. The smallest particles are called nanoplastics and they are small enough to get their way deep into the human body.

最大的微塑料肉眼可見，大小不足0.5厘米。但許多微塑料都很小，小到像灰塵一樣可以在不經(jīng)意間被我們吸入或和食物一起吃下去。最小的塑料顆粒被稱為納米塑料，它們小到可以深入人體。

New findings from the University of Portsmouth show that there is so much syntheticmaterial in our homes that we might be breathing in up to 7,000 microplastic particles a day. Using specialist equipment, they measured a typical family home and found the highest concentration of it was in the bedroom of the eight-year-old daughter, whose room was decorated with plastic-based bedding, carpet and soft toys.

英國樸茨茅斯大學(xué)的新發(fā)現(xiàn)表明，我們的家中有太多合成材料，我們每天可能會(huì)吸入多達(dá)7000個(gè)微塑粒子。研究人員使用專業(yè)設(shè)備測量了一個(gè)典型家庭住宅，發(fā)現(xiàn)其中微塑料最集中的地方是8歲女兒的臥室，她的房間擺放著塑料床墊、地毯和毛絨玩具。

Although research is in its infancybacteria and the immune system, among other things.

盡管研究還處于起步階段，但微塑料的危害可能很大——一些研究表明，微塑料與高患癌風(fēng)險(xiǎn)和擾亂人體激素有關(guān)。在動(dòng)物研究中，微塑料已被證明會(huì)影響新陳代謝、腸道細(xì)菌和免疫系統(tǒng)等。

It is not yet known what a healthy level of microplastics might look like, but Dr Sabine Donnai, CEO of the Viavi clinic, is adamantthat many people in the West are over the threshold. In tests at her clinic, patients often come back with dangerously high levels of plastic in their bodies, she says.

目前，我們還不知道人體內(nèi)微塑料的健康水平是多少，但Viavi診所首席執(zhí)行官薩賓·多奈博士堅(jiān)信，許多西方人已經(jīng)超過了安全線。多奈表示，在她的診所進(jìn)行的測試中，患者體內(nèi)的塑料含量往往處于較高的危險(xiǎn)值。