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Article Summary and/or Excerpt:
There’s a lot to learn about the health effects of microplastics, but as humans consume more of it there is intensifying urgency to uncover the full picture.
It’s enough to make you sick.
Plastic waste is everywhere, littering our streets, waterways and beaches. Now it’s showing up in our bloodstream, in the form of microplastics – plastic particles that range in size from 0.1 to 5,000 micrometres. Researchers are still getting the full picture of just how harmful microplastic consumption is for humans, but the early indications are a cause for concern.
Microplastics most commonly enter the body through the gastrointestinal tract, starting from the mouth. But they’ve shown up all over the upper body in organs such as the intestine, lungs, kidneys, liver, and spleen. Microplastics have also appeared in faeces and the placenta. In one analysis, infants had a concentration of poly(ethylene terephthalate), a polyester resin found in plastics, in their faeces ten times higher than in the adults’ samples. Microplastics were even detected in the earliest stool of newborns, meaning humans are being exposed to plastic before birth.