A Credit Card’s Worth of Plastic in Your Brain? Understanding Microplastics and How to Avoid Them
- Sami Hoeldtke
- Oct 22
- 6 min read
Are we really consuming a credit card’s worth of plastic? This article takes a deep dive into the unsettling truth about microplastics: what they are, where they come from, their impact on human health, and how to avoid them. The latest research has made some alarming discoveries, but it's not all doom and gloom. Keep reading to find out how these particles are affecting our bodies and how your actions can make a difference.
What Are Microplastics?
According to the National Ocean Service, microplastics are small pieces of plastic that measure less than 5mm in length. The term itself was coined by Professor Richard Thompson in his landmark paper, "Lost at Sea: Where Is All the Plastic?' published in 2004. Plastic has been around for over 100 years now, but Richard Thompson played a massive role in pushing forward research about plastic and where it ends up. These little pieces of plastic are created in a wide variety of ways. Some pieces of plastic are originally manufactured to be that size intentionally for whatever product they are used in, but these pieces can also come from larger pieces of plastic breaking. Some examples include litter or other things wearing down in nature, textiles or fabrics being used or washed broken down, abrasion of your tires, spilling of plastic feedstock to make other pieces, and countless others. These plastics are released in much larger quantities than you might think. In a single 6kg load of laundry for example, over 700,000 fibers could be released to wastewater. Plastic is also now the most prevalent type of debris found in both the ocean and the Great Lakes.
These microplastics are now being found literally everywhere. They have been found in samples from shorelines all over the world and in the subtropical gyres of all 5 oceans. Microplastics pose a serious threat to wildlife because of the physical and toxicological risks they pose to these animals and organisms. Since these plastics have been found even miles offshore in the middle of the ocean, it is no surprise that they are now being found in the human body. The impacts of microplastics on the rest of the environment and wildlife are significant, and by no means should they be ignored, but this article focuses on the human element as it resonates and impacts every person and makes the issue personal as well as environmental. Humanity is a part of the ecosystem, not separate from it, as we often forget.
How Do They End Up in Our Bodies?
How do these microplastics get into our bodies in the first place? The two main processes plastics enter our body are through ingestion and inhalation, but there is some emerging research about whether some can even slip through our skin.
Ingestion refers to being taken in through the processes of eating and drinking. One way this happens is from drinking out of a plastic water bottle. The bottle itself releases microplastics into the water that are transferred to your body when you drink it. There was a recent study done looking at nanoplastics, plastics measuring smaller than 1 micrometer, and how many of them are in bottled water. This research team was led by Drs. Wei Min and Beizhan Yan of Columbia University discovered on average, a liter of bottled water includes about 240,000 tiny pieces of plastic. About 90% of these plastic fragments were nanoplastics and were previously immeasurable. In fact, this total was 10 to 100 times more plastic particles than seen in earlier studies, which mostly focused on larger microplastics. These nanoplastics found included all 7 types of plastic.
Now obviously 240,000 is a massive number, but remember this in the nano scale, so all of these pieces, even added together, are still too small to be seen by the naked eye. However, do not let that give you a false sense of confidence. This is just one example, and just 1 water bottle. This all adds up. You can also intake microplastics through inhalation. Some of these particles are so small that they can be suspended in the air and can be inhaled. This is especially problematic because the nanoplastics in the air can stay suspended and travel several kilometers throughout a week, and creates a closed loop of microplastics that we can’t really escape from.
Inhaling them and ingesting them are the 2 main ways we are aware of as of now, that these plastics enter our bodies. Within our bodies, they have been documented and found nearly everywhere: the liver and kidneys, the brain, breastmilk, the placenta, testicles, and in the blood for a few examples. Many of these findings are relatively recent so there is ongoing research to further assess the explicit health implications of plastic in the body and what the thresholds are. The Penn State Institute of Energy and the Environment explains that Microplastics in the blood vessels have raised concerns, which include increased risk of heart attack, strokes, inflammation, and blood clotting. The chemicals in microplastics have been linked to various additional health issues, including cancer, immune system damage, reproductive problems, and developmental delays. The Stanford Medicine Newsletter released an article online about microplastics which states “Evidence is growing that this exposure could be harmful. Studies show that microplastics make fish and birds more vulnerable to infections. Animal and cellular studies have linked microplastics to biological changes including inflammation, an impaired immune system, deteriorated tissues, altered metabolic function, abnormal organ development, cell damage and more." A recent large-scale review of existing research by scholars at the University of California, San Francisco, concluded that exposure to microplastics is suspected to harm reproductive, digestive and respiratory health and suggested a link to colon and lung cancer. Further, one of the first papers to directly examine the risks of microplastics exposure in humans, published in The New England Journal of Medicine in March 2024, studied patients undergoing surgery to remove plaque from their arteries. "More than two years after the procedure, those who had microplastics in their plaque had a higher risk of heart attack, stroke and death than those who didn't.”
Do We Have a Credit Card's Worth of Plastic In Our Brains?
Yes and no. As research and new ways to measure these nano and micro plastics continue to come out, it has been discovered that we inhale a lot more plastic than we originally thought. Over the course of an entire week, humans could inhale a credit cards worth of plastic. There are a ton of variables here and there has not been much, if any, research on how this plastic moves through your airways themselves yet.
There have been studies done on cadaver brains, and those have found about a spoons worth of plastic in the brain. For a visual, think an entire white plastic spoon in a box someone would bring to a gathering. Notably, the brains of these cadavers contained between 7 and 30 times more plastic than samples of the liver and kidneys did which produces further questions such as how and why it appears that plastic collects in the brain more than other organs. It is important to note however, that the liver and kidneys are the parts of the body responsible for filtering out pollutants and other things your body does not need.
Another interesting note about the findings of plastic in the body is that women may be at risk of consuming more plastic than men in part due to their potentially higher exposure to plastics in cosmetic products and other items typically marketed towards women. Women having higher exposure rates poses a particular concern regarding the reproductive system as plastics can act as endocrine disruptors and could potentially contribute to complications during pregnancy. There has not yet been much research to support these claims; rather, they are theories circulating based on other semi-related research.
So What Can We Do To Protect Ourselves, or Can We?
We are currently surrounded by micro and nanoplastics to a point that they are floating around in the air. However, the good news is that your body does have the capability to filter these out to a certain extent through your liver and kidneys and your urine etc. so it is important to maintain your health if you are able to. There are also plenty of ways you can limit your exposure to these plastics and prevent them from entering, the environment. Avoiding plastic will benefit both your health and the health of our environment, if you have the means to move away from it. At the end of the day it's a privilege to have a choice in the matter and to recognize that so many people around the world do not have that option.
A couple of big ones are not reheating your food in plastic containers, and to swap out plastic water bottles for another material like metal or glass if you can. Hang drying your clothes is an action you can take to help reduce the amount of micro and nanoplastics into the environment as the dryer is rough on clothing and can release fibers from your clothing.
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