Microplastics in Our Brains

March 16, 2025 / activist360

A conceptual illustration depicting human cognition, featuring a vintage anatomical drawing of a brain within a simple silhouette of a head.

What You Need to Know and How to Reduce Your Exposure

Did you know that tiny plastic particles—called microplastics—are in our food, water, and even the air we breathe? Every day, we are unknowingly consuming and inhaling microplastics. Scientists have now discovered something even more concerning: microplastics are making their way into human brains, and their levels are increasing.

This raises an important question: What does this mean for our health, and what can we do about it? While we may not be able to eliminate microplastics entirely, there are simple steps we can take to reduce our exposure and protect our health. In this article, we’ll break down what microplastics are, how they enter our bodies, the potential health risks, and practical ways to reduce our exposure.

What Are Microplastics?

Microplastics are tiny plastic particles, smaller than 5mm, that come from broken-down plastic waste, synthetic clothing, industrial processes, and food packaging. Because plastic never fully biodegrades, these particles remain in the environment indefinitely, breaking down into even smaller pieces over time.

Common Sources of Microplastics

Microplastics are found in everyday items, including:

Bottled water: Contains significantly more microplastics than tap water.
Seafood: Marine animals ingest microplastics from polluted oceans.
Processed foods: Particularly those packaged in plastic.
Tea bags: Some brands use plastic-based tea bags that release billions of plastic particles into hot water.
Air: Microplastics are floating around in household dust and city pollution.

Since we eat, drink, and breathe microplastics daily, it’s important to understand how they enter our bodies and what harm they may cause.

How Do Microplastics Get into the Human Body?

Microplastics make their way into our bodies through three primary routes:

Eating and Drinking

Bottled water drinkers ingest up to 90,000 microplastic particles per year, compared to 4,000 for tap water drinkers (Cox et al., 2019).
Seafood, processed foods, and canned goods can contain microplastics due to contamination during production and packaging.
Heating food in plastic containers releases billions of plastic particles into the food.

Breathing

Airborne microplastics are present in the air we breathe at home, in offices, and outdoors, particularly in urban areas. Additionally, synthetic clothing sheds plastic fibers into the air when it is washed or worn, further contributing to the inhalation of these particles.

Household Exposure

Cooking and storing food in plastic can cause microplastics to leach into the food we eat. Similarly, plastic tea bags and coffee pods release billions of tiny plastic particles into hot liquids, increasing overall exposure.

Because these tiny particles are everywhere, scientists are now studying how they affect our health—especially our brains.

Are Microplastics Harmful to Our Health?

While research is still ongoing, several studies have raised serious concerns about microplastics in the human body. Here’s what scientists have found so far:

Microplastics in the Brain

A recent study found microplastics in human brain tissue, with levels 3–5 times higher in people with dementia (Nihart et al., 2025). Scientists are unsure whether dementia weakens the brain’s defense, allowing more plastic in, or if microplastics contribute to cognitive decline.

Heart Disease Risk

A study found that people with plastic particles in their arteries had a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes (Marfella et al., 2024).

Gut Health Concerns

People with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) had 1.5 times more microplastics in their stool compared to healthy individuals (Yan et al., 2022). Microplastics may disrupt gut bacteria and contribute to inflammation.

Other Potential Effects

Scientists suspect microplastics may also contribute to:

Hormone disruption: some plastics contain chemicals that interfere with the endocrine system.
Lung irritation: from inhaling airborne microplastics.
Long-term health risks: still being studied.

Since avoiding microplastics completely is impossible, the next best step is reducing exposure where we can.

Easy Ways to Reduce Microplastic Exposure

While plastic is everywhere, simple daily changes can significantly lower the amount of microplastics we ingest and inhale.

Switch to Tap Water: Drinking tap water instead of bottled water can reduce microplastic intake by over 90%. Use a water filter if concerned about contaminants.
Avoid Heating Food in Plastic: Use glass or stainless steel containers instead of plastic. Never microwave food in plastic containers.
Choose Fresh or Frozen Foods Over Canned: Canned foods can release chemicals like BPA, which is linked to hormone disruption. Opt for fresh, frozen, or glass-packaged alternatives.
Use Cloth or Metal Tea Strainers: Avoid plastic tea bags—opt for loose-leaf tea with a stainless steel infuser.
Improve Air Quality: Use a HEPA air filter at home to remove airborne microplastics. Vacuum regularly to reduce plastic dust indoors.

These small changes can make a big difference in reducing everyday exposure.

Can Microplastics Be Removed from the Body?

Right now, scientists don’t know if microplastics can be fully removed from the human body, but some early research suggests:

Sweating may help: Some studies suggest that sweating (through exercise or sauna use) can help excrete plastic-related chemicals like BPA.
Healthy lifestyle choices: Staying hydrated, eating fiber-rich foods, and regular exercise may help the body naturally eliminate toxins.
Long-term exposure reduction: The best strategy is reducing intake in the first place.

More research is needed, but reducing microplastic exposure now is the safest approach.

Small Changes Make a Big Difference

Microplastics are everywhere, and while we can’t avoid them completely, we can take practical steps to limit exposure and protect our health. By making the choices we suggested above, you can help protect your health while also reducing plastic pollution in the environment.

It’s crucial to hold local, state, and national elected officials accountable for policies that protect your health and the well-being of your loved ones. Be mindful of who you vote for, and once they are in office, advocate for strong regulations that reduce plastic pollution and safeguard public health. Your voice matters—demand action.

Sources: Nihart et al., 2025 – Study on microplastics in the human brain (Nature Medicine). Marfella et al., 2024 – Microplastics and heart disease (New England Journal of Medicine). Cox et al., 2019 – Microplastic consumption (Environmental Science & Technology).

‘Turn off the tap on plastic,’ UN Chief declares amid debate over new global treaty

December 4, 2022 / activist360

*Photo by Naja Bertolt Jensen on Unsplash*

“Plastics are fossil fuels in another form,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, “and pose a serious threat to human rights, the climate, and biodiversity.”

By Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams

Hours before the first round of negotiations to advance a global plastics treaty concluded Friday in Punta Del Este, Uruguay, the leader of the United Nations implored countries “to look beyond waste and turn off the tap on plastic.”

“Plastics are fossil fuels in another form,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres tweeted, “and pose a serious threat to human rights, the climate, and biodiversity.”

Guterres’ comments elevated the demands of civil society organizations, scientists, and other advocates fighting for robust, legally binding rules to confront the full lifecycle impacts of the plastic pollution crisis. A coalition of more than 100 groups has called for limiting the ever-growing production and consumption of plastic and holding corporations accountable for the ecological and public health harms caused by manufacturing an endless stream of toxic single-use items.

Petrochemical industry representatives who attended the first intergovernmental negotiating committee meeting (INC-1) for a global plastics treaty, by contrast, attempted to bolster fossil fuel-friendly governments’ efforts to slow the pace of talks—convened by the U.N. Environment Program and set to continue off-and-on through 2024—and weaken proposals for action.

In the wake of this week’s opening round of debate, the Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) alliance launched a petition outlining what it calls the “essential elements” of a multilateral environmental agreement capable of “reversing the tide of plastic pollution and contributing to the end of the triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.”

According to experts associated with BFFP, an effective global plastics treaty must include the following:

Significant, progressive, and mandatory targets to cap and dramatically reduce virgin plastic production;
Legally binding, time-bound, and ambitious targets to implement and scale up reuse, refill, and alternative product delivery systems;
A just transition to safer and more sustainable livelihoods for workers and communities across the plastics supply chain; and
Provisions that hold polluting corporations and plastic-producing countries accountable.

BFFP member Graham Forbes, head of the Global Plastic Project at Greenpeace USA, said in a statement that “we cannot let oil-producing countries, at the behest of Big Oil and petrochemical companies, dominate and slow down the treaty discussions and weaken its ambition.”

“If the plastics industry has its way, plastic production could double within the next 10-15 years, and triple by 2050—with catastrophic impacts on our planet and its people,” said Forbes. “The High Ambition Coalition must show leadership by pushing the negotiations forward and calling for more ambitious measures which protect our health, our climate, and our communities from the plastics crisis.”

A global plastics treaty, Forbes added, represents “a major opportunity to finally end the age of plastic, and governments should not let this go to waste. We demand that world leaders deliver a strong and ambitious treaty that will dramatically reduce plastic production and use, open inclusive and justice-centered discussions, and ensure that the next INCs are free from industry interference.”

Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) senior attorney Giulia Carlini pointed out that profit-maximizing corporations “have deliberately manufactured doubt about the health impacts” of their products in previous treaties that address health issues, such as the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

“There is strong scientific consensus that plastics-associated chemicals cause diseases,” Carlini continued. “If the treaty is to succeed in meeting its health objectives, it will be essential to set strict conflict-of-interest policies going forward.”

After more than 145 governments expressed support this week for developing a pact with specific and shared international standards—which could include a ban on single-use items and requirements to ensure reuse and circularity—Eirik Lindebjerg, global plastics policy lead at the World Wildlife Fund, said that “the momentum demonstrated at these negotiations is a promising sign that we will get a truly ambitious treaty with effective global measures to stop plastic pollution” by 2024.

“It has been a very important week in the history of protecting the environment and people,” said Lindebjerg. “This week we saw an encouraging level of agreement, both in formal and informal spaces, on the urgency of seeking a joint solution to this major threat to nature and communities, and to do so in a comprehensive, effective, inclusive, and science-based manner.”

However, he warned, “this is just the first step towards a legally binding global treaty that can help us stop plastic pollution.”

“The next stage of negotiations will be more challenging, as countries must agree on the technical measures and rules,” said Lindebjerg. “Although in the minority, there are also some powerful opponents of global rules and standards, which risk potentially weakening obligations on countries to take action. The push for an ambitious global plastics treaty has only just begun.”

“Millions of people around the world, whose livelihoods and environments are affected by plastic, have their eyes on these negotiations,” he added. “Now negotiators must harness this momentum to push for specific rules to be negotiated as part of the treaty.”

Lindebjerg’s assessment was shared by other summit delegates.

“Negotiations at INC-1 this week demonstrated that the majority of countries are ready to take urgent action to confront the plastics crisis, including by addressing the plastic production that drives that crisis,” said CIEL president Carroll Muffett. “Sadly, it also proved that plastic producers and their allies are equally committed to slowing progress and weakening ambition—from the U.S. insistence that the plastic treaty replicate the weaknesses of the Paris agreement, to last-minute maneuvers by other fossil fuel and petrochemical states to block countries’ ability to vote on difficult issues.”

“Despite these maneuvers, the world made real progress in Punta Del Este,” said Muffett. Robust “global commitments and binding targets remain both necessary and achievable,” she added, but securing them will require “the U.S. and other countries join the rest of the world in pairing claims of high ambition with the policies that high ambition demands.”

While this week marked the first time that governments have met to hash out global-scale regulations to restrict plastic production, the United States and the United Kingdom—the world’s biggest per-capita plastic polluters—have so far refused to join an international treaty to curb the amount of plastic waste destined for landfills and habitats, though both countries are reportedly now open to the idea.

“Over this week, we have seen multiple interventions raising whether the future treaty will be based on national action plans, or global, mandatory targets,” said CIEL senior attorney Andrés Del Castillo. “We know that this will be top of the agenda at INC-2. The failure of countries to fulfill their emissions reduction plans under the Paris agreement shows that we cannot afford another treaty that centers on the whims of its leaders.”

The next session of the conference aimed at creating a global plastics treaty is set to take place in Paris in May 2023.

Opinion: Big oil goes all in on toxic plastic

August 28, 2022 / activist360

Great at creating problems for humanity, fossil fuel giants increase oil demand in the form of plastic.

By Maya Rommwatt, Common Dreams (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Oil companies are high on the hog again, with record high gas prices fueling record profits–profits so high they’re even catching the attention of Democrats in Congress. And of course, they’re using the profits to buy back shares so their shareholders will benefit from higher stock prices.

Maybe all that money is going to their heads because only a handful of years have passed since we learned Exxon and many other big oil companies have known since the seventies exactly how their dirty product was about to trigger a global meltdown. Yet they’re still up to their old tricks and trying to fool us while they pump more oil. As governments and communities race to stop runaway climate change, oil companies have quietly found a way to sell even more oil, in the form of plastic. Plastic production is projected to grow astronomically and is expected to account for 60% of oil demand in the next decade.

It would be nice if plastic made from oil was as clean and benign as makers of plastic would like us to believe, but petrochemical plastics are dirty from start to finish, and it’s the product where big oil is placing its largest bets. It turns out some of the biggest oil corporations are also some of the biggest petrochemical corporations. And petrochemical production is mostly plastics.

Cheerleaders of increased plastic production can talk all day about how the solution to the plastic waste crisis is simply more recycling, but less than 9% of plastic is actually recycled, and the industry is now trying to relabel plastic incineration as recycling to help justify increased production. And plastic waste may be just the tip of the iceberg. Before all of the needless plastic products and packaging oil companies make even reach the waste stream, they’ve already done countless damage to communities near sites of production and to consumers.

To make plastic out of oil, petrochemical plants release toxic air pollution that saddles nearby communities with inordinate negative health impacts, communities which are more often likely to be communities of color. If plastic production increases as planned, these communities will be subject to even more dangerous air pollution than they already grapple with.

Once the plastic is made, it enters the market where consumers become the next group of humans put at risk by dirty oil in the form of petrochemical plastic. Unless you live on the dark side of the moon, where presumably it’s not yet a problem, then you’ve probably heard of the microplastics problem. How plastic things fall apart into little pieces, each shred smaller than the last. How scientists can’t seem to find a place on the planet that’s not teeming with microplastics. How scale doesn’t matter because it’s in the air above the tallest mountains, in the streams on every continent, and in our blood and breastmilk. Now that we know it’s everywhere, scientists are beginning to ask if plastic is actually safe, because it’s made with myriad chemicals.

As they examine the toxic impacts of petrochemical plastics, scientists are beginning to warn that it’s not looking good for us. The more research that is done into the impact of plastics on human health, the more that dangers are discovered. Plastic contains many toxic chemicals, and it turns out many of those chemicals are moving from the plastic into our bodies. That plastic soda bottle you drank out of last week? Odds are good that the chemical used as a catalyst in the bottle making process has made its way into the soda. That polyester stuffed animal your infant adorably sucks on the ears of? It’s also made with a dangerous catalyst that may be released into your child’s mouth. Defend Our Health tested beverages in plastic bottles and found dangerous chemicals in every single one, at least one of the chemicals a known carcinogen.

We cannot continue allowing oil companies to poison our air, bodies, and climate with their toxic product. This is a critical moment in history, and when they’re not too busy reaping outrageous profits, oil companies are trying to convince us the product they’re selling isn’t killing the planet and everything on it, despite the evidence. Instead of making more stuff we don’t need, like a box full of air-filled plastic bubbles that take up nine-tenths of the box space because it was somehow cheaper for Amazon to mail a thing that way, perhaps the industry could check the room and start trying in earnest to transition itself off its dirty product. You’d think none of these companies would want to be the last one around trying to sell a product no one wants, but it seems they’re all participating in a mass delusion driven by short-term thinking. It’s time to draw down, not ramp up, oil and gas, and that means plastic production too.