Scientists are working hard to understand the impact of microplastic pollution in the environment and in human bodies. The research requires identifying and analyzing types of microplastics particles, which can range from 1 nanometer to 5 millimeters in size.
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It’s a disturbing thought: At this very moment, tiny crumbs of plastic are trickling through our bodies, a parade of unwelcome houseguests ready to take up residence in some tissue or organ.
A wave of new studies has come out recently, and each one seems to paint an ever more vivid picture of how microplastics — and their smaller counterparts, nanoplastics — have infiltrated the deepest corners of our anatomy. The lungs, liver and heart, guts and brain, even the testicles and placenta — nothing seems to be spared.
The outpouring of research has brought enormous visibility to how these fragments permeate our daily lives. Long studied in oceans, waterways and marine life, researchers have now shifted focus to human health.
Hospital-at-home programs are not the same thing as traditional home health care. The usual home health model involves a few visits a week for about a month. Hospital-at-home programs offer far more intensive care, usually for about five days, including several visits a day from a doctor, nurse or emergency medical technician and 24-hour virtual monitoring of patients.
Mass General Brigham’s hospital-at-home program can care for up to 70 patients, expanding the hospital’s capacity, said Heather O’Sullivan, who runs the program.
“So if you just think about a 70-bed hospital, which is what we operate today, think of what that would look like in a traditional brick and mortar setting – how many floors? how many buildings? the workforce required for that,” O’Sullivan said.
A decade ago, Heather Leslie could scarcely find anyone to fund her work in this area.
“It seemed like nobody wanted to touch it,” says Leslie, a microplastics researcher in the Netherlands whose team was the first to detect these particles in the human bloodstream several years ago.
As the work has gained momentum, so have questions about the damage microplastics could be doing inside of us. Researchers tend to be wary about making pronouncements because the field is still in a “pioneering phase,” as Leslie put it.
And yet there are undoubtedly concerns. Some of the strongest evidence comes from lab studies using animals as well as what’s already known about the damaging effects of chemicals added to plastics. A review of the data published Wednesday concludes that microplastics are “suspected” to harm human reproductive, digestive and respiratory health, with a possible link to colon and lung cancer.
“This is a signal that we should be acting now,” says Tracey Woodruff, a senior author on the study who directs the Program on Reproductive Health & the Environment at the University of California, San Francisco.
Susanne Brander, an ecotoxicologist at Oregon State University, says it’s not helpful to “elicit a gigantic state of alarm,” but she agrees that we already know enough about the health risks to push for substantive changes, including a global agreement to curb the rising production of plastics.
