Plastic shards traverse the human brain

Our brains are increasingly plastic. Minuscule Shards and polymers flakes are surprisingly abundant in brain tissue, a postmondem brain study shows.

This evaluation of microplasty and nanoplasty, published on 3 February Natural remedyRaises questions and concerns about what this plastic does.

“The findings are also significant and disturbing,” says Raffaele Marfella, a cardiovascular researcher at the University of Campania “Luigi Vanviteli” in Naples, Italy. He and colleagues recently discovered that people with more micro- and nanoplastic, or MNP for short, on blood vessel plates were at higher risk of heart attacks, strokes and death.

Plastic levels are complicated to measure. To get the full look, researchers used several different methods to measure MNP in 91 brain samples collected by people who died since 1997. Measurements all showed significant growth over the years. From 2016 to 2024, the average concentration of MNP increased by about 50 percent, from 3,345 micrograms per gram to 4,917 micrograms per gram.

“Plastic levels detected in the brain are almost unbelievable,” says study co -author Andrew West, a neuroscientist at the University. “In fact, I didn’t believe until I saw all the data” from numerous tests with different samples.

Unbelievable, but not surprising, given how plastic has traversed the world. “Microplasty is in the food we eat, the water we drink and even the air we breathe,” says Richard Thompson, an expert on microplastic pollution at the University of Plymouth in England, who helped detect microplastics. Of course they have made their way to human tissues, he says. Previous studies have found them in the lungs, intestines, blood, liver and placenta.

In samples collected in 2024, the concentrations of MNPs in brain tissue were about 10 times higher than levels in the liver and kidney tissue, researchers report. Scientists had wondered if the blood-trum barriers, a cellular area made non-even, could keep these polymers abroad. This does not seem to be the case.

“This study clearly shows that they are there and at high concentrations,” says Phoebe Stapleton, a toxicologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, a “next steps will be to understand what they are doing [in the brain] and how the body responds to them. “

In addition to the MNP levels described, their forms are unexpected, Stapleton says. Thin, sharp particles – not solid grains – were present in the brain tissue. Many Laboratory studies of MNPs experiment with polystyrene engineered beads, a widely used plastic in the food industry, medical supplies and more. But the brain did not have much polystyrene; However, there were abundant polyethylene, another ordinary household plastic that appears in food bags, shampoo bottles and toys. And the shards didn’t look like beads. “Older Shards ending up in the brain look like nothing we have used in the lab,” West says.

Higher levels of MNP appeared in 12 brains of people with diagnoses of dementia. This result cannot mean anything about it if one caused the other. Brain changes that come with dementia can allow more plastic to enter, for example.

Strangely, MNP levels were not related to death age, but changed a lot among people, the study says. Researchers tend to understand why some people have high levels while others seem to have avoided construction, says West.

The results come with remarks. Sample sizes were relatively small. The risks of pollution and variability in measurement can make the interpretation difficult. And this study did not follow plastic levels in living people, so it is not known whether or as MNP can fluctuate over time.

There are big questions, including how MNPs are inserted into the brain, whether they can be removed and – perhaps more pressing – whether they are harmful or benign. “Simply put, we do not know the health implications of microplastics in the brain,” West says. But he also says it would be wrong to wait to get all the answers before addressing the issue. “People are wondering,” Is this other asbestos, or the other lead, or is it something much worse than what we have seen – more difficult to discover and harder to get rid of? “”