Microplastics ‘in humans’

CONTAMINATION DOUBTS: STUDIES CLAIM PARTICLES IN BLOOD, ORGANS, EVEN BRAINS >>→ Sloppy lab practices ‘risk turning research into pseudoscience’.

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How many tiny pieces of plastic are currently inside your body? A series of headline-grabbing studies in recent years have claimed to have found microplastics throughout human bodies-inside blood, organs and even brains.

However, some of this research has recently come under stinging criticism from scientists.

Some have warned the studies could not rule out contamination from plastic inside laboratories, or certain techniques could be confusing human tissue with plastic.

Seeking a solution to this escalating dispute, 30 scientists from 20 research institutions across the world proposed a new framework on Tuesday for evaluating microplastic research.

The proposal, inspired by how forensic science weighs evidence found at crime scenes, offers researchers a consistent way to communicate how confident they are that microplastic has actually been detected.

No-one disputes that these mostly invisible pieces of plastic are ubiquitous throughout the environment - they have been found everywhere from the tops of mountains to the bottom of oceans.

It is also “very likely” that we are regularly ingesting microplastics from air and food, said Imperial College London researcher Leon Barron.