Microplastics Within Us

Experts have found plastic particles in our lungs, blood, brains, and so much more

Hiya!

If I remember correctly, I was in high school when the downsides to plastic became more well-known. I recall a brief period when people were swapping out their plastic water bottles for metal ones. Then a few years later, the whole plastic straw thing happened, but that’s about it. Nothing much else was done, and the world chose to move on. Society was already too deep into using plastic because it’s cheap, durable, and convenient — and no one wanted to give it up.

Even still, our global societies are highly dependent on plastic. Meanwhile, growing research and news of plastic’s devastating environmental drawbacks are hushed, avoided, and ignored. After all, we (Americans especially) are strategically influenced to prefer personal convenience over, well, pretty much everything else. But now, research shows that plastic isn’t just covering our planet and harming countless wildlife. Plastic is inside us, too.

What’s the Deal with Microplastics?

You’ve likely heard the term “microplastics” a lot over the few years, but what exactly are they? And why does it keep coming up?

Microplastics are tiny plastic particulates ranging between 10 nanometers to 5 millimeters in diameter — or so tiny we can’t see it with the naked eye to the size of a pencil eraser. To put this in perspective, there are 25,400,000 nanometers in one inch, and a strand of human DNA is 2.5 nanometers in diameter. Thanks to their minuscule size, microplastics float in the air and can circle the planet within days before falling back down just to start the cycle again.

The term was first used by a marine scientist at the University of Plymouth named Richard Thompson in 2004 after he found piles of rice-sized plastic specks on an English beach. Since then, the term has spread far and wide. First amongst the scientific communities, then to us, the public, as a continuous flow of research announced the presence of microplastics in every conceivable place on Earth — and plenty of inconceivable places too.

A specialist in microplastic pollution and a marine scientist at the U.K.’s National Oceanography Center, Alice Horton, told National Geographic:

“When I started doing this work in 2014, the only studies being done involved looking for where [microplastics] are. We can stop looking now. We know wherever we look, we will find them.”

She’s not exaggerating, either. Over the last couple of decades, scientists have found microplastics everywhere.

They’re in all our water — oceans, rivers, rain— including all drinking water, whether tap or bottled. In fact, while some might assume bottled water is the safest due to cleanliness or regulations, research shows that “more microplastics were detected in [commercial] bottled water than in tap water.”

Microplastics are also in our food via its packaging. Even fruits and vegetables aren’t safe, probably because microplastics are also in the soil. Other everyday items have them, too, including salt, beer, cow’s milk, and cosmetics. They’ve been found everywhere between the incredible oceanic depths of the Marina Trench to the tippy top of Mount Everest’s summit.

Considering this, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that microplastics exist within us, too. Which they do, and in some astonishing places. It appears that microplastics inside us are about as common as outside us.