It seems like microplastics are everywhere these days. These tiny plastics are in the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink. And they’re in our bodies, too, with recent research finding microplastics in our arteries.
“The rate of increase in microplastics in the environment is exponential and we have every reason to believe that the concentrations in our bodies will continue to increase in the coming years and decades,” says Matthew Campen, PhD, a professor at the University of New Mexico College of Pharmacy in Albuquerque, who has researched microplastics.
While there’s a growing body of evidence linking microplastics to a wide range of health issues, there’s not much definitive proof yet that these particles directly cause specific medical issues, Dr. Campen notes. “What scientists worry about is several trends in disease prevalence that have been unexplained — Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, colorectal cancer in people under 50, inflammatory bowel disease, and global reductions in sperm count,” says Campen, noting just some of the health problems that have been linked to microplastics in recent years.
The most convincing evidence yet of the threat microplastics may pose to human health was just published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), Campen says. Scientists found microplastics and nanoplastics — even tinier particles — inside arteries associated with a more than quadrupled risk of events like heart attacks, strokes, and premature death.
Even though the study didn’t prove that microplastics directly cause heart problems, “The recent report in NEJM raises serious alarms,” Campen says.
Read on to understand how much you should worry — and what you can do about it.
What Are Microplastics and Where Do They Come From?
Microplastics and nanoplastics are far too tiny to detect as you go about your daily life. Microplastics are less than 5 micrometers in size — thousands of times smaller than a grain of rice — and nanoplastics are below 1 micrometer.
These tiny particles can turn up in a lot of places you might not expect. They’re in water bottles and other plastic containers (which might seem obvious) but also in makeup, personal care items and grooming products, clothing and textiles, and many foods and drinks, says Martha Gulati, MD, director of preventive cardiology at the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.
“There is an enormous amount of degraded plastic pollution contaminating our planet Earth and we are inhaling and ingesting microplastics and nanoplastics every day and everywhere,” Dr. Gulati says. “They have been found even in remote areas like the Antarctic and Arctic, Mount Everest, and the ocean floor.”
