Blood treatment removes forever chemicals

A new study suggests that a blood cleaning treatment used to lower cholesterol may also help remove harmful “forever chemicals” from the body.

The treatment called apheresis is mainly used for people whose high cholesterol cannot be controlled with medication.  During the procedure blood is taken from one arm and passed through a special filter that removes excess fats.

The cleaned blood is then returned to the body through the other arm. At the Technical University of Dresden in Germany, home to one of the world’s largest apheresis centers around 10,000 of these treatments are performed each year.

For the study researchers examined used filter bags from the apheresis machines to see what substances had been removed along with cholesterol.

They wanted to find out whether the filters could also remove harmful forever chemicals toxic substances that remain in the environment and the human body for a very long time as well as tiny plastic particles known as microplastics.

The researchers say the early findings are promising. If future studies confirm these results apheresis could become a useful way to reduce the amount of certain harmful pollutants in the body in addition to lowering cholesterol.