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And chemicals often found in plastics are known to cause a variety of health problems, including cancers, metabolic disorders, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and fertility issues.
Humans are exposed to toxic chemicals and microplastics at all stages in the plastics life cycle. The effects of microplastics on human health are a growing concern and an actively increasing area of research. Tiny particles known as microplastics (MPs), have been found in various environmental and biological matrices, including air, water ...
Finding microplastics in human body parts is not new: Scientists have uncovered the minuscule waste products in human blood, lungs, brains, hearts and testicles. But a new study, published Monday ...
The brain has a protective barrier that should protect us against microplastics Unlike the kidney, liver, and other organs, the human brain has a protective filter called the blood-brain barrier ...
Microplastics are likely to degrade into smaller nanoplastics through chemical weathering processes, mechanical breakdown, and even through the digestive processes of animals. Nanoplastics, or NPs, are a subset of microplastics and they are smaller than 1 μm (1 micrometer or 1000 nm). Nanoplastics cannot be seen by the human eye. [4]
However, as plastic is broken down into smaller pieces and eventually microplastics, there is a higher likelihood that it will be consumed by plankton and enter into the food chain. [58] As plankton are eaten by larger organisms, the plastic may eventually cause there to be bioaccumulation in fish and other marine species eaten by humans. [58]
The Food and Drug Administration said in a statement: “Current scientific evidence does not demonstrate that levels of microplastics or nanoplastics detected in foods pose a risk to human health.”
A microbead imaged using scanning electron microscopy. Microbeads are manufactured solid plastic particles of less than one millimeter in their largest dimension [4] when they are first created, and are typically created using material such as polyethylene (PE), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), nylon (PA), polypropylene (PP), and polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). [5]