Key points
- Microplastics are been found throughout the human body
- Every day humans ingest, inhale or otherwise come in contact with microplastics
- Microplastics are less than five millimetres
ISLAMABAD: Microplastics have been found throughout the human body – including inside lungs, blood and brains.
While it is not yet clear how harmful they are to our health, some researchers are sounding the alarm.
These tiny pieces of plastic have been detected almost everywhere on Earth, from the deepest oceans to the highest mountains, as well as in the air, water, soil and food chain.
Every day humans ingest, inhale or otherwise come in contact with microplastics, which are less than five millimetres (0.2 inches) and mostly invisible to the naked eye.
“A human in 2024 has plastic in almost all the organs of their body,” French specialist researcher Fabienne Lagarde recently told a hearing of France’s parliament last year.
Human health
Scientists say it could be years before we have a full understanding of how these tiny plastic particles are affecting human health. But we do know they have been found from the depths of the Mariana Trench to the heights of Mount Everest. And we know that plastic is accumulating in our bodies, too.
“The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat — it’s in it,” Richard Thompson, a marine biologist at the University of Plymouth, who coined the term “microplastics” in a 2004 paper told the New York Times. “We’re exposed.”
What are microplastics?
Scientists generally define “microplastics” as pieces less than 5 millimetres long. Nanoplastics, which measure less than 1 micrometre, are the smallest of these and the most likely to get into our blood and tissues.
Microplastics mostly come from larger plastics, which degrade with use or when they aren’t disposed of properly, said Jeffrey Farner, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Florida A&M University-Florida State University College of Engineering.
“We use plastics in areas or in ways that lend themselves to the production of microplastics or to the breakdown over time,” Dr Farner said — for example, in construction materials that are weathered outdoors, in tubing that generates microplastics when it is cut and in agriculture, as plastic mulch or in irrigation systems.
In blood vessels
In March 2024, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine found an association between microplastics accumulating in people’s blood vessels and an increased risk of heart attack, stroke or even early death.
“The body of research on microplastics is growing and it is already showing us that the health impacts are very concerning,” said Tracey Woodruff, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.
Woodruff recently conducted a systematic review of 2,000 previous studies on animals, finding that microplastics “can harm fertility, are linked to increased cancer risk and can harm respiratory health,” she told AFP.
