Plastic is unavoidable in today's world. We wear clothes made of it, encase our food in it, and fill our homes with it.
And considering how much plastic society produces every year — about a trillion pounds — it shouldn't come as a surprise that it can be found basically everywhere across the Earth, from the peaks of Mount Everest to the depths of the world's seas.
The benefits of the omnipresent material are clear: It's cheap to create, versatile, lightweight, and can protect our food from the elements. But the health impacts of living in a world full of plastic are not yet fully understood.
Microplastics specifically are entering human bodies at record levels, spurring an explosive growth in research studies investigating their impacts on people's health.
What exactly are microplastics?
Simply put, microplastics are pieces of plastic smaller than about one-fifth of an inch in length. However, microplastics are often so small that they can't be detected by the naked eye alone.
When microplastics are smaller than one micron, which is roughly one-25,000th of an inch, they can technically be considered "nanoplastics."
Microplastics are commonly created when larger pieces of plastic break down — imagine a plastic water bottle degrading. When microplastics break off of larger pieces of plastic, they're called "secondary microplastics." Primary microplastics, such as cosmetic beads or glitter, are produced to be super small to begin with.
Due to their minuscule size, microplastics can easily make their way into our food, bodies, and environment. Recent studies have found microplastics accumulating in the strangest of places, ranging from human brains to clouds and even to dolphins' breaths.
And these plastic particles are entering our bodies in enormous numbers, lodging themselves deep in the tissues of our organs. So, as society ramps up its production of plastics that are inevitably ending up in our bodies, it's critical we understand what they can do to us.
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How do microplastics end up in our bodies?
Microplastics can enter our bodies in several distinct ways. Dr. Imari Walker-Franklin, a research chemist and microplastics expert at RTI International, told The Cool Down, "Inhalation and ingestion are the most common ways we are exposed to microplastics."
Dr. Walker-Franklin explained that from "the moment that we drive, our tires release microplastics" that can easily be inhaled.
Our food system is also a major source of microplastics. Beyond the contamination of our drinking water (both tap and bottled), the water that farmers use to grow our produce contains microplastics. The soil that's used to grow it contains them, too. Off the farm, microplastics also find their way into our food during processing.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, one recent study found that more highly processed foods have more microplastics. The study's co-author, Madeleine H. Milne, explained this clearly to Beyond Plastics, stating, "For example, a chicken nugget was more contaminated than its equivalent of a chicken breast." Milne added that the factory machinery or even the workers' clothing could be responsible for the extra microplastics in the meat.
Similarly, machinery and other processing sources were found in 2017 to be the cause of high contamination from phthalates, which leach from plastics and microplastics, in powdered macaroni and cheese packets. Annie's later announced it would revamp its production process to reduce plastic parts.
As Milne noted, textiles are also an enormous source of microplastics entering our environment. Nylon and polyester, which are both types of plastic, are used for nearly 70% of all clothes worldwide.
This makes the wearing, washing, and drying of our clothes — particularly low-quality garments produced by the fast-fashion industry — significant sources of microplastics in our air and water.
Are microplastics dangerous?
The enormous increase in research being done on microplastics has led to some scary headlines. But understanding the science behind them isn't easy.
When asked about the health impacts of microplastics, Dr. Walker-Franklin told The Cool Down, "Our understanding of impact in the body is still new." She added, "We don't have a definitive smoking gun that says microplastics are causing X chronic disease."
Dr. Leonardo Trasande, a pediatrician who directs NYU's Langone Center for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards, similarly explained to The Cool Down that "the biggest and best answer is [that] we don't really know" the full health impacts of microplastics, He added, however, that "there are a few studies that have shown some very alarming cause for concern."
One such study, highlighted by both Dr. Walker-Franklin and Dr. Trasande, found that people with microplastics (and nanoplastics) in their neck arteries were significantly more likely to have strokes and heart attacks than those who did not.
Part of what makes the health impacts of microplastics so challenging to study is that they come from an enormous number of different kinds of plastics. And many of these plastics can produce health risks apart from the microplastics themselves — chemicals from the plastic attach to the microplastics before entering our bodies.
Think bisphenol A, better known as BPA, which has been linked to reproductive problems, and the aforementioned phthalates, which the New York Times said prompted concern over studies suggesting they "can disrupt male hormones like testosterone and have been linked by some researchers to learning problems in children."
Dr. Trasande explained this phenomenon to The Cool Down, saying, "Just because microplastics are an emerging field, doesn't mean we don't know that plastics are harmful to human health. … We know that the chemicals [in plastics] are problematic. We just don't know if the microplastics and nanoplastics are acting alone or adding to the consequences."
"Just because microplastics are an emerging field, doesn't mean we don't know that plastics are harmful to human health."
– Dr. Leonardo Trasande,
Director of NYU's Langone Center for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards
About 4,000 of the chemicals found in plastics that could be sneaking into the body through microplastics are toxic, hazardous, or even carcinogenic.
Beyond the toxic chemicals that could be hitching rides into our bodies, the microplastics themselves irritate our bodies' tissues. Dr. Trasande told The Cool Down, "In addition to delivering chemicals that are toxic to hormones in our bodies, [microplastics] can irritate blood vessels. They can irritate tissues."
When asked directly how concerned we should be, Dr. Walker-Franklin told The Cool Down, "A precautionary principle is never the wrong approach for anything that we don't have full information on. It doesn't necessarily mean that we have to create extra anxiety, which can also be not good for your health. But … there are available and accessible precautions to take."
How to avoid unnecessary microplastics
While it's virtually impossible to entirely avoid microplastics in modern society, we can all do things to limit our exposure. When it comes to clothing, there are a ton of simple actions we can take.
First, avoid buying low-quality textiles from the fast fashion industry. Natural fibers, like cotton and wool, and those more tightly knit, are less likely to shed microplastics.
Beyond the material of your clothes, changing your laundry routine is a simple step to reduce the number of microplastics you'll create and be exposed to. In general, washing your clothes less frequently will produce fewer microplastics. And if you can dry them using a clothesline, that'll help too. When it's time to run a load, washing your clothes on cold will both release way fewer microfibers and save you money on your energy bills.
You can do plenty of things to keep your water freer of microplastics. The first step is to avoid plastic water bottles when you can (along with other single-use plastics). Dr. Walker-Franklin told The Cool Down that other easy actions include "moving towards a reusable water bottle, filtering your water with reverse osmosis, or [getting] a general Brita water filter."
To reduce microplastics in your food, never microwave anything plastic. Dr. Trasande explained to The Cool Down, "When it says 'microwave safe,' that means that the plastic doesn't literally melt in front of you … [but] at a microscopic level, a few different things happen … [and] the chemicals themselves absorb into food directly."
"When it says 'microwave safe,' that means that the plastic doesn't literally melt in front of you … [but] at a microscopic level, a few different things happen … [and] the chemicals themselves absorb into food directly."
– Dr. Leonardo Trasande,
Director of NYU's Langone Center for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards
And when you're cooking on the stove, opting for stainless steel over non-stick pans avoids heating cookware with plastic coatings. It's almost always better to avoid cooking any food in plastic.
Finally, because dust can contain microplastics that can be inhaled, regular vacuuming or use of an air purifier — especially with a HEPA-grade filter on both to capture small particles — can help protect us from breathing in additional microplastics.
Why else should we care about microplastics?
About 99% of all plastics are created from the dirty fuels that are overheating our planet. So, beyond their potential to harm our health and the health of other plants and animals, creating all of these plastics that degrade into microplastics means we're worsening a totally different crisis.
"[This concern] doesn't necessarily mean that we have to create extra anxiety, which can also be not good for your health. But … there are available and accessible precautions to take."
– Dr. Imari Walker-Franklin,
Research Chemist and Microplastics Expert at RTI International
Luckily, this also means that reducing our society's dependence on plastic can help slow the warming of our Earth, too. Even small steps like switching to a reusable metal water bottle instead of a plastic one can help fight several health and environmental problems simultaneously. Even better if you can get one with no plastic straw.
You can also choose plastic-free options for many other everyday products, such as reusable or compostable sandwich bags, and even bring your own to-go containers to restaurants — which may sound weird but is becoming enough of a new trend that we created a dedicated page for it in our TCD Guide for ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Of course, as a society, we need to change our relationship with plastic to slow the overheating of the Earth and the spread of microplastics. However, small individual behaviors can add up to the larger change we need.
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