Researchers are calling for more urgent actions to reduce plastic pollution after multiple studies detected microplastics in an alarming number of human organs, including the brain, lungs, liver, kidneys, blood vessels and bone marrow.
The brain has become “one of the most plastic-polluted tissues yet sampled," said the study's lead author, Matthew Campen. "There’s much more plastic in our brains than I ever would have imagined.”Charna Flam is a writer-reporter at PEOPLE. She has been working at PEOPLE since 2023. Her work has previously appeared on Variety, The New York Post, and The Wrap.
Researchers are calling for more urgent and actionable measures to reduce plastic pollution after several studies detected tiny microplastics in a wide range of human organs, including the lungs, reproductive organs, liver, kidneys,While the exact health consequences in humans are not yet fully known, studies have found that microplastics can lead to, various cancers, and a disrupted endocrine and immune system.
“I don’t know how much more plastic our brain can stuff in without it causing some problems,” Campen added.Another one of Campen’s studies examined 12 brain samples from people who had died with dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease — and found that the brains contained up to 10 times more plastic, by weight, than healthy samples.
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