Arachne

Yes, I would assume that the presence of the microplastics in the plaque is not contributing significantly to the accumulation of the plaque or the development of the heart disease, since it is the plaque accumulation that causes the heart disease and the presence of microplastics is more like the presence of other bioaccumulators in higher-trophic organisms (like vitamin B12, mercury, or strontium-90).

The study that is linked to in the article did find that "patients with carotid artery plaque in which MNPs (Microplastics and Nanoplastics) were detected had a higher risk of a composite of myocardial infarction, stroke, or death from any cause at 34 months of follow-up than those in whom MNPs were not detected."

That should be enough to make a valid claim that microplastics can be "toxic" given that their presence has been correlated to higher risk of injury or death. Then there's also knowledge of how they can leach and pose certain risks to people and ecosystems and so on.

The only reason I’m focusing on whether the microplastics are indeed toxic or not is because that is a big claim, and if found to be true would be really big news.

I think the problem here is that it's already mostly known that they're probably bad so that's not very news-worthy, but yes there's no 100% conclusive evidence that they're the direct cause of harm yet. It's like the state cigarette smoking was in before there was 100% conclusive evidence that it causes lung cancer. Sure, there was already plenty of evidence that it was clearly unhealthy, it clearly contained various unhealthy things that would obviously have unhealthy effects on the body, and it was correlated with higher risk of death... but it didn't make the big headlines until it did get that 100% conclusive evidence. And just like cigarette smoking mircoplastics have trillion dollar corporations that will use their bags of money to delay, confuse, and obstruct efforts to reduce microplatics because they want to continue profiting off their products so IMO any statements like "we won't know until there's 100% proof!" should be taken with many grains of salt. There's already more than enough evidence to know that the sooner things are done to decrease the spread of microplastics the better.

Some plastics can leach chemicals which can have toxic effects on the body.

But overall this question is silly. "Toxic" can be defined as "capable of causing injury or death, especially by chemical means; poisonous". So even if it's not necessarily chemically or poisonously bad for the body, clogged arteries can cause injury and death via heart attacks and or strokes regardless of what is clogging them. So unless someone is trying to argue that microplastics found in the clog didn't help contribute to the clog to any degree it's clearly having a bad effect on the body.

So this is like trying to debate if a stainless steel knife found in someone's heart could have had a "toxic" effect on their body.

This post is guilty of the exact kind of misinformation it is complaining about...

The linked Snopes article states that the line: "I [am] so afraid of him coming in the shower with me that I've waited until late at night to take a show" is not in the released contents of the stolen diary.

But the released contents of the stolen diary do contain: "showers w/ my dad (probably not appropriate)." Parents showering with their young children is quite normal, but the "probably not appropriate" makes it look more questionable along with other things in the diary such as "Hyper-sexualized @ a young age ... I remember somewhat being sexualized with [a family member]; I remember having sex with friends @ a young age;"

If we trust Snopes articles, Joe Biden showering with his daughter is "Unproven", not a "lie" as this post's title so boldly claims.