Today, I read an interesting article where some scientists have had a great breakthrough, where they have found a way to convert PET plastics to Paracetamol, which is currently being created using fossil fuels. If this becomes a reality, our plastic wastes can easily be processed to create something very useful. I don't know how this will solve the microplastic issue, but maybe the other form of plastics can be recycled with the help of this effort. I would say this is a great innovation, and at least this will solve the plastic problem to some extent.
Currently paracetamol manufacturing process has a high carbon footprint of about 55 percent, and the scientists are trying to solve this problem with the help of PET waste that we throw in the garbage. Plastic waste generated can be converted into the pharmaceutical industry for the preparation of paracetamol. In addition to that the scientists are also exploring to find out if there are other ways in which PET can be used.
This started when researchers found out that Escherichia coli was able to survive by consuming the molecules from PET. After reading this piece of information, I was also wondering how plastic consumption by mistake would be harmful to our gut. The microplastics that we consume by mistake should be well utilized by E-Coli to survive properly. There is no information on that, but maybe too much is harmful but a small quantity is better.
The synthetic metabolic process they designed converts nearly 100% of PET-derived substrates into the world’s most commonly used painkiller, acetaminophen, also called paracetamol in many parts of the world, including Scotland (Nature Chemistry 2025, DOI: 10.1038/s41557-025-01845-5)
This discovery has given a great boost to our medical science because it solves two problems. One is the plastic problem that we have, and another is the problem where the paracetamol manufacturing process has a high carbon footprint.
There is nothing big to fear about on this as long as the discovery is throughly done before reaching the markets. Maybe this can take a lot of time to reach the markets, but now my perspective before consuming a Paracetamol will become different. Many companies might start adopting this technique, and paracetamol is already cheaper in the market and now with this discovery, it can get even cheaper, and I'm interested to know how far this can be used in other painkiller creation.
Reference
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