this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2024
634 points (98.0% liked)

Greentext

4409 readers
1335 users here now

This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.

Be warned:

If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I wonder if they actually filter the blood that people donate. I know they test it, but it would be cool if they filtered it as well for various crap.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Could they even filter microplastics without just getting rid of all of the red blood cells? If they were big enough to be filtered without catching blood cells we would probably be seeing way more people getting actively and catasteophically screwed by them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Here's one source about the size of microplastics:

The researchers couldn't give a precise breakdown of the particle sizes due to the limitations of the testing methods. It's safe to presume, however, that smaller particles closer to the 700 nanometer limit of the analysis would be easier for the body to take in than larger particles exceeding 100 micrometers.

And red blood cells are 6.2–8.2μm. So I wonder if some kind of sieve could filter anything smaller than 5μm or so. Then again, there's probably a bunch of other stuff in there as well, like white blood cells.

It's too bad that they're in the same range as important things...