A new study has found a dramatic increase in levels of microplastics and nanoplastics (MNPs) in human brains in recent years. MNPs have previously been detected in human lungs, intestine, bone marrow and placenta. In the new study, researchers took one tissue sample from the brain, kidney and liver of 80 people autopsied in 2016 and 2024. They also sampled the brains of 12 people who died with Alzheimer’s or dementia within that period. The researchers found that brain and liver samples from 2024 had considerably higher MNP concentrations compared with those in 2016. Brain samples showed a 50% increase during the eight years. “Plastic production has been going up, plastic pollution has been going up. It’s perfectly logical that levels of plastic in the human body should be going up at the same time,” Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and epidemiologist at Boston College, U.S., not involved with the study, said in a phone call with Mongabay. “The plastics we’ve thrown away from the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s are now forming into these nanoplastics that are getting into our water, our agricultural system and ultimately our food,” said Matthew Campen, a study co-author and professor in the College of Pharmacy at the University of New Mexico. Since food packaging is a well-known source of microplastic, researchers expected to find the highest MNP concentrations in the liver, part of the digestive system. However, brain samples had 7-30 times more MNP than liver or kidney samples. Campen said they expected the brain…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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