Invisible plastic discarded long ago—water bottles, candy wrappers, and baby strollers—coats the planet. Plastic is everywhere: floating in the air, in the Mariana Trench deep in the ocean and on Mount Everest’s peak. Scientists have started calling our era the Plasticene.
Emerging research shows all this plastic dust—termed microplastics—negatively impacts human health. Here’s the good news. Simple things can reduce your exposure.
What Are Microplastics?
Microplastics are tiny plastic particles < 5 millimeters in diameter. Think sesame seeds or grains of sand. Microplastics are manufactured for products from clothing to cosmetics, even toothpaste. They also are produced when plastic disintegrates from the sun’s radiation or ocean waves. Continued breakdown creates increasingly minuscule fragments that become airborne.
Microplastics Are In Your Body
The air we breathe is filled with microplastics. Indoor air concentrations are similar to the outdoors yet concentrations can be considerably higher in urban and industrial areas. The largest source of aerosolized microplastics—about 84%—is from cars kicking up road debris.
We drink microplastics in our water, especially in plastic bottles. Containers leach microplastics into our takeout. People ingest—orally and by inhalation—about 74,000 and 121,000 microplastic particles annually.
Skin creams and face washes contain microplastics. While these microplastics don’t pass directly through your skin, toxic chemicals on them can be absorbed into the blood stream, like bisphenols and phthalates.
Our body tries to fight off microplastic particles through natural defenses. Some of it thankfully passes through us. Yet some gets embedded in our lungs, blood vessels, digestive system, and placenta. Microplastics are even in breastmilk which transmitted to vulnerable infants.
Labs Experiments Demonstrate Clear Negative Health Effects In Animals
Research showing harm from microplastics comes mostly from lab experiments. Studies demonstrate toxicity through oxidative stress which leads to free radical build-up and cell damage. Microplastics can also cause direct cell membrane and DNA damage and abnormal immune responses.
For example, microplastics injure intestinal cells in ricefish by creating oxidative stress and by negatively impacting bacteria lining the gut—called the microbiome. Exposure to microplastics lowers sperm quality in male mice and increases lipid peroxidation in the brains of the European seabass leading to neurotoxicity. Microplastics have also been shown to cause hormone problems and potentially even increase cancer risk.
Emerging Research Shows Negative Impacts On Human Health
It is difficult for epidemiologists to study microplastics because it’s tough to know an individual’s exposure to microplastics. One option is to study high dose occupational exposures. For example, Dutch synthetic fiber factory employees have higher rates of chronic lung disease and as do North American nylon factory workers.
A 2024 New England Journal of Medicine study found that people with higher amounts of microplastics in their neck’s blood vessels during surgery were four times more likely to have a heart attack, stroke, or death over the next three years.
Five Ways To Reduce Exposure To Microplastics
There’s no consistent human evidence showing everyday non-extreme exposure to microplastics worsens your health nor is there evidence you can actually reduce risk through action. Yet it’s hard to argue lowering your exposure is a bad idea. Here are five ways:
1. Avoid Heating Plastic. Skip eating or drinking anything sitting in heated plastic—such as your microwave or in plastic cups. That also unfortunately includes steamy takeout in plastic containers.
2. Reduce Consumption From Pre-Packaged Plastic Packages Or Bottles. Avoid plastic water bottles if you can. Filtered tap is preferred. Aluminum cans also are often coated with plastic and can leach into your soda. Processed food like chips and cookies are not good for other reasons—but reducing plastic packaged junk foods can lower your microplastic exposure. Instead try to eat or drink out of glass, metal or porcelain containers.
3. Move To Buying Plastic-Free Or Products With Less Plastic. Favor natural fabrics over synthetic ones which can shed plastic (e.g. polyesters). Additionally, consider moving to plastic-free beauty products and avoid products with microbeads.
4. Vacuum More Frequently. Rugs, drapes, and couches shed plastic particles into the air. Vacuum frequently to reduce microplastics that settle on the floor or use wet mopping.
5. Reconsider The Way You Eat Seafood. The ocean is loaded with plastic—so seafood can be a source of microplastic consumption. If you eat seafood, make sure it is cleaned properly (ie. deveining shrimp) or avoid seafood where you eat the entire organism which include the digestive track which may contain plastic (e.g. mussels).
Humans have junked up the world with plastic products for a century. It will take hundreds if not even thousands of years for it to break down. In March 2022, the UN Environmental Assembly adopted a resolution to end plastic pollution. This may be an opportunity to better protect us from plastic’s health risks—if it’s not too late.
