Microplastics in Humans [New Understanding in 2024]

Microplastics in humans is the new disease and to understand it, you will need to start from the basics.

When plastic was invented by Leo Baekeland in 1907, little did he think that these plastics would one day contribute to the disease of this planet. He had used phenol and formaldehyde under pressure and heat conditions to make what we call modern-day plastic. His invention was patented owing to the value it was supposed to add to the world. But that same very plastic is a menace now in the form of microplastics in food and in almost everything.

“A gift before is a curse now.”

The fact is, we need plastic even today, as it can make our lives much easier. But the problem is, we cannot hoard plastic, which means we have to throw it out. But where are we throwing it? Within our own Earth! What is happening due to it?

The Earth is slowly filling up with a lot of plastic, and soon enough, we might be wading not through water and snow but through plastic to make our way to our offices and homes.

Microplastics are already within us and the food we eat. Soon, our body might have a good amount of plastic, which is what is being predicted right now. We might soon be made of microplastics, and in no time, it means we would have one more way to bring down the earth.

Here is a brief list of dates that tell you when this kind of plastic was invented.

Year	Plastic Type
1907	Bakelite
1926	PVC (polyvinyl chloride)
1935	Polyamide
1938	Polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon)
1940	Silicone and synthetic rubber
1947	Rilsan (bioplastics)
1949	Melamine-formaldehyde, MF’ (Formica), followed by polyester
1953	Multi-sectoral plastic
1993	Bioplastics came into being

What is microplastics?

By now, we might have guessed that microplastics are nothing but remnants of all the plastic that was there on Earth once.

Any plastic remnant that is less than 5 mm (0.2 inches) or smaller gets classified and termed microplastics.

There are eminently different sources from which microplastics generate, and some of them are:

1. Larger plastic debris from which they generate
2. Microbeads are a type of microplastic.
3. Resin pellets that are used in manufacturing plastic.

What are the two kinds of microplastics in humans right now?

Microplastics of two types are ruling humans right now: primary and secondary types.

The primary microplastics are usually different in many ways from the secondary microplastics, and these points are used to classify the primary microplastics from the secondary ones.

If you want to know more about the difference between the two types of plastics, you will need to go through the table here.

Primary Microplastics	Secondary Microplastics
Primary microplastic crystals are artificially created	Secondary microplastics are remnants of the larger plastic mass
Primary microplastics are manufactured for different purposes	Secondary microplastics are everywhere and cause unnecessary health hazards

When in the water, fish consume them and get recycled back to us.

We humans have traces of microplastics in almost every major organ of the human body.

Here is a list of where all microplastics were found in the human body.

1. Spleen
2. Lungs
3. Liver
4. Colon
5. Feces
6. Placenta
7. Breastmilk
8. Heart tissue
9. Blood
10. Skin
11. Digestive system
12. Human Cells
13. Biliary tract
14. Gastrointestinal tract
15. Intestine

Through a study, it was found that the human body has primarily plastics of the following kinds:

1. PE (Polyethylene)
2. PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate)
3. PP (Polypropylene)
4. PS (Polystyrene)
5. PVC (Polyvinyl chloride)
6. PC (Polycarbonate)
7. PMM (Polymethyl methacrylate)
8. TPU (Thermoplastic polyurethane)

At some point, all of us want to know how microplastics enter the human body. We already know that microplastics enter our body through food, which means we would have to be careful about food, but can we be?

There is not just one source for the microplastics to enter our body; they enter in different way.

How do microplastics enter our body?

The microplastics in humans body enter through the following routes:

1. Oral intake includes food, drinks, and baby teas.
2. We inhale them as they are small enough to wander with the air.
3. Through skin contact with plastic materials. Admit it or not, we are all fairly and always surrounded by plastic. A few examples would include our phone cases, personal care products like the shaving kit, our beauty products, and most importantly, our plastic-contaminated clothes.

Here is a probable list of all those materials that can lead to microplastic exposure.

Vegetables exposed to sewage sludge

Shellfish consumption

Effects on food of activities like plastic mulching

Plastic food containers

Baby teats

Plastic drinking water bottles

Face cream

Face cleansers

Why are microplastics in human health getting closely related?

According to the unraveling of new information, microplastics in humans are getting in the way of our health.

A lot of studies are being done that are shifting people’s attention from the underlying causes previously determined for various diseases towards microplastics.

Some of the diseases where microplastics in humans are added as additional causes currently include:

1. Cardiovascular diseases
2. Obesity
3. Metabolic disorders
4. Organ-level dysfunctions
5. Reproductive and developmental toxicities
6. Neurotoxicity
7. Increased oxidative stress and DNA damage
8. Decreased immune responses

Here is a bit more on every kind of disease that is happening to us if we have microplastics inside us.

Pointers for the role of microplastics in human health

 1. Immune responses to microplastics

Different kinds of microplastics in humans will produce different kinds of immune responses.

For example, amino-modified polystyrene (PS) inhibits phagocytosis of macrophage cells (M1 and M2).

Carboxyl-modified PS will not impact the phagocytosis of M2 cells.

Phagocytosis is the process of ingesting and removing particles less than 5 mm in size. Different kinds of cells can show phagocytosis.

Monocytes, macrophages, osteoclasts, dendritic cells, eosinophils, and neutrophils will comprise the pack of cells responsible for carrying out the process of phagocytosis.

2. Organ-level impacts of microplastics in humans

Here are some of the types of microplastics and their impacts on different organs of the body covering more on microplastics in humans.

Organoid Types	Types of microplastics	Toxic effects	Amount of exposure	Duration of exposure
Airway	Polyester fibers from clothes	Inside the cellular layer, they can reduce SCGB1A1 gene expression, a biomarker of lung injury.	1-50 mcg/ml	1 week
Forebrain	Polystyrene (PS): 1–10 mcm size	Reduced embryonic brain-cell tissue viability	5-100 mcg/mL	7-27 days
Intestinal	PS: 50 nm size particles	Cell apoptosis, inflammation, and active endocytosis into enterocyte cells	10-100 mcg/mL	1-2 days
Liver	PS: 1 mcm size	Hepatotoxicity, disturbed lipid metabolism, HNF4A, and CYP2E1 in liver organoids	0.25-25 mcg/mL	48 hours

3. Intestinal damage: microplastics in humans

Microplastics in humans can lead to the dysfunction of the liver and the intestine. These are the ways it will start the dysfunction within your body.

• Polystyrene of size 50 mcm and above will create stronger oxidative stress.
• PS values less than 45 mcm will imbalance the microflora.
• When in the intestine, they would significantly reduce the capacity to digest lipids.
• They also aggravate the activity and, in turn, the toxicity of the OPFRs (organophosphate flame retardants).

4. Impact on the immune response: microplastics in humans

Animal studies have shown that there are the following problems with the immune response of the body when there are microplastics in humans:

• Interleukin-1α (IL-1α) increases in rat serum.
• PS inhalation causes upregulated expression of tumor growth factor (TGF-β) and tumor necrosis factor (TNF-α) in rats.
• A significant increase in TNF-α, IL-1 β, and (interferons) IFN-γ occurs with the ingestion of microplastics of any size.

These are enough to imbalance the intestine in a major way, and rest is a non-ending chain process that can cause debilitating impacts on the intestine.

5. Neurotoxicity induction: microplastics in humans

They destroy the nerve conduction system and the acetylcholine activity.

All this and more has already been studied in molluscans, nematodes, and crustaceans.

Apart from all this, the reproductive system is also destroyed in the process.

Removing microplastics from water: microplastics in humans

Eliminating microplastics in humans is a process that is already gaining speed and when it comes to water management, here we are;

• Simply boiling your tap water can remove 90% of the microplastics from it.
• Activated carbon found in normal filters can also help remove nano plastics and microplastics.
• Egg white is being used to create monolithic aerogel for promoting water filtration.
• Several polysaccharide extracts, like those from fenugreek, okra, cactus, aloe vera, tamarind, and psyllium, were used to capture microplastics.

Removing microplastics from food

Boiling and cooking food properly and even coagulating the food also removes microplastics, though not successfully every time. Microplastics in humans is the number one cause of concern presently.

Eliminating microplastics from aquatic and waste water resources is still being tried.

Every process is being worked at to make new innovative ways walk in, but then removing microplastics from food is essential, and so is its removal from nature.

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