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CNN
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Nature seems to offer you the escapism of urban life, but the world under you may tell a different story. Even in the shade of fruit trees, you could be surrounded by small skyscrapers – not steel or concrete, but microscopic worms wiggle and wrapped in the shape of a long vertical tower.

These miniature architects, known as nematodes, are found all over the Earth’s surface, but German scientists recently witnessed their impressive architectural techniques in nature for the first time.

A few months after carefully inspecting rotten pears and apples in local orchards, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior and the University of Constance found that worms 1 millimeter long (0.04 inches) were able to climb each other and accumulate structures up to ten times their individual sizes.

For more information on the mystical physics of the soft, slimy tower, the researchers brought samples of nematodes called caenorhabditis elegans into the laboratory and analyzed them. There, scientists realized that worms could be assembled in a few hours. Some people detected the environment, searched for buildings accordingly, and reached out from the twisted chunks as “arms” to explore the buildings. However, it was not immediately clear why the worm formed the structure.

The team’s findings published Thursday in the Journal Current Biology show that even the smallest animals can encourage big questions about the evolutionary purpose of social behavior.

“What we got was more than a worm standing above each other,” said Senior Research Author Serena Din, who is the leader of the largest Planck research group in genes and behavior. “It’s a coordinated super-body, acting as a whole and moving.”

To find what motivates the nematode building’s behavior, the research team tested the worm’s response to being thrust, protruding, and even visiting by fly while stacked in tower formation.

“We found that they were very responsive to the presence of stimuli,” said Daniela Perez, the first author of the study. “They feel it, and then the tower goes towards this stimulus, and our metal picks and flies become lively.”

This coordinated response suggests that hungry nematodes can come together and ride large animals such as insects and easily frown to transport them to green pastures (not) to eat more rotten fruits.

“When you think about it, an animal 1mm long cannot craze all the way to the next fruit two meters (6.6 feet) apart. It could easily die along the way or be eaten by a predator,” Perez explained. She added that nematodes can hitchhike solos too, but once they arrive in a new area within the group, they may be able to continue recreating.

The structure itself could also serve as a mode of transport, Perez noted, as evidenced by the way some worms form bridges throughout the gap in the Petri dish, reaching from one surface to another.

“The discovery is really exciting,” said Oritt Pereg, an associate professor of computer science who studies life systems at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Biofrontier Institute. “It both have established ecological functions that make towers, and really opens the door to conducting more controlled experiments to try to understand the perceptual world of these organisms and how they communicate within large groups.” Peleg was not involved in this study.

As a next step, Perez said her team wanted to know if the formation of these structures was a collaborative or competitive action. In other words, do towering nematodes behave socially to help each other, or do their towers resemble the stampedes on Black Friday sales?

Studying the behavior of other self-organizing creatures could provide clues to nematode social norms and help answer this question, Ding said.

David Who, professor of mechanical engineering and biology at Georgia Tech, is one of the few creatures known to cooperate like nematodes, ants assembled to form buoyant rafts to survive floods. Hu was not involved in the research.

“Alis are incredibly sacrificial to each other and generally do not fight within the colony,” Hu said. “It’s because of their genetics. They’re all from the same queen, so they’re like brothers.”

Like ants, nematodes do not appear to exhibit distinctive role differentiation or hierarchy within tower structures, Perez said. Each worm from the base to the top of the structure is equally mobile and powerful, indicating that the competition is not working. However, since lab-grown worms were essentially cloned from each other, it is not clear whether role differentiation occurs more frequently in nature, where nematode populations may have more genetic differences, she noted.

Furthermore, socially supportive creatures tend to use some form of communication, Peleg said. In the case of ants, it could be their pheromone trail, but bees rely on ritual dance routines, while slime-shaped ones use pulsating chemical signals.

However, in nematodes it is not yet clear how they communicate, or whether they communicate at all, Ding said. “The next step for (the team) is to actually choose the next question.”

In particular, there is a lot of interest in studying cooperative animal behavior among the robotics community, Hu said. One day, he added, he could use information about the complex social nature of creatures like nematodes to inform how technologies, such as computer servers and drone systems, communicate.

CNN
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The black-colored plastic used in children’s toys, take-out containers, kitchenware, grocery meat, and production trays can contain amazing levels of toxic flame agents that can leach from electronic products during recycling.

“The product with one of the highest level of flame retardants was the black plastic pirate coin beads that kids wear. They resemble Mardi Gras beads, but similar to wear on the costume.”

“That particular product had up to 22,800 parts per million of the total flame retardant, which amounted to almost 3% per body weight,” Liu said. “Children often play with toys over and over again until they get tired.”

The most dangerous flame retardants found in consumer products are the same as those used in electronic enclosures in televisions and other electronic devices, Liu said.

“It appears that the plastic used to make consumer products was contaminated with flame retardants due to mistakes in recycling e-waste,” she said.

One consumer product, black plastic sushi tray, contained one in a million flame delayed decabromodiphenyl ether, or decabude for short. The chemical is a member of PBDE, a class of polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or flame retardants.

People with A survey from April 2024 found that blood levels of PBDE were about 300% more likely to die from cancer as the lowest level of person.

Decabde was banned entirely by the US Environmental Protection Agency in 2021 after being linked to cancer, endocrine and thyroid problems, fetal and child development and neurobehavioral function and reproductive and immune system toxicity.

Despite these restrictions, Dekabude was found at levels 5-1,200 times the European Union limit per 10 parts in 70% of the samples tested, Liu said.

Based on exposure to contaminated black plastic kitchen cookware, such as spaturas and slotted spoons, researchers estimated that they could be exposed to an average of 34.7 parts per day.

“It was particularly concerning that they found delaying agents that should not be used anymore,” said toxicologist Linda Birnbaum, former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program.

“We recommend not using black plastic as food contact materials or purchasing toys with black plastic pieces,” said Birnbaum, who was not involved in the study.

According to the American Chemistry Council website, electronic devices that use fire delay agents as a way to prevent fires are common in US households. “The average home includes over 20 electronic products, including televisions, smartphones, computers, gaming systems, tablets, and more. These devices are embedded in everyday life, but can pose additional safety risks for Flame Eltardant.”

Manufacturers also use flame retardants for sofas, love seats, recliners, office chairs, car interior decorations, toddler car seats, carpet padding, foam padded yoga mats and padded baby items. From there, flame retardants can “leach into the air from the product and attach to ingestable dust, food and water,” according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

The North American Flame Detardant Alliance, which represents manufacturers and users of Flame resistant chemicals, told CNN that the October 2024 survey did not consider actual exposure levels for humans or exposure routes.

“The use of flame retardants in electronics and appliances has helped to reduce fire-related injuries and deaths and prevent property destruction,” said Erich Shea, NAFRA’s Director of Product Communications, in an email.

“Recycling plastics from e-waste is a key component of the circular economy, helping to save resources and reduce the environmental impact of plastic waste,” said Shea.

Birnbaum told CNN it is well known that plastics that could contain or be exposed to dangerous chemicals should not be recycled.

“The new concern raised in this study is that “black plastic that should not be recycled will end up with all sorts of products that lead to human exposure,” she said.

The study, published on October 1, 2024, was published in the Journal Chemosphere and conducted by Toxic Free and the Amsterdam Institute for Life and Environment at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. The study looked at only black plastic, so it was not possible to determine whether other coloured plastics could be exposed, Liu said. Furthermore, researchers did not list the brand names of the products tested.

“In other countries, previous studies have been conducted that have seen the same problem as black plastic being contaminated with flame retardants, and there have been studies that allow flame retardants to leach through toy mouths from kitchen utensils into food and child’s saliva,” Liu said.

“However, no studies have been conducted specifically examining US food contact materials,” Li said. “So we’re really interested in testing food contact materials like toys and kitchens. Or foodservice wear items. ”

Researchers looked into 203 consumer products for bromine, an important indicator of flame retardant use, and then looked into the highest level of 20 products more closely.

Dr. Leonardo Trasande, professor of pediatrics and population health at Nyu Langone Health in New York City, said brominated flame retardants are particularly concerned due to their tendency to toxicity and bioaccumulation, or to stay in the body for many years.

“I don’t know of any safe levels of brominated flame retardants,” said Trasande, who was not involved in the new study. Trasande was the lead author of a paper in 2018 alone that Flame Detardant discovered that the US healthcare system would cost $159 billion.

Experts say there are ways for consumers to reduce risk from flame retardants.

“You can either replace your plastic kitchen utensils with stainless steel options or choose plastic-free items to help reduce overall exposure to harmful additives and plastic,” says Liu. “Some manufacturers also have a strong policy on removing reducing agents from their products, allowing them to become discreet shoppers.”

Dust, wipes and vacuums regularly remove flame retardants as well as dust that is likely to be contaminated with plastic and other unpleasant chemicals, Liu said. Frequent hand washing and proper ventilation are also helpful.

“Many people wash and reuse black plastic containers that get food in,” Birnbaum says. “I want people to quickly take food out of that black plastic and put it in a glass, stainless steel or ceramic dish.”

Birnbaum said that black plastic containers should not be microwaved or otherwise heated with food, as the heat encourages chemicals to leach into the food they are in contact with.

These steps reduce exposure, but there is only so much that consumers can do, Liu said.

“What our research shows is that if harmful chemicals like flame-reducing agents can be purposefully used in products such as televisions and other electronic devices, they can be recycled and unintentionally contaminated downstream,” Li said.

“We need government and business policies to limit the use of these harmful chemicals, such as flame retardants and dangerous plastics, so that items can be safely recycled without worrying about chemical contamination or health.”