Microplastics are everywhere -- even inside your body.
It sounds scary, and it is.
Just listen to University of Washington’s Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana: “You want to try to get it out, but it’s something that can build up over time and potentially cause harm.”
Plastic is everywhere you go, from car tires to food storage containers to PNW-beloved fleece and synthetic exercise clothes. And it never goes away.
Plastic just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces -- pieces small enough to exist in your body. At that point, they are considered microplastics, less than 5 millimeters (about the width of a pencil eraser).
Research has shown that plastics can contribute to cancer, heart attacks, and reproductive problems, among many other health threats, so the presence of microplastics is a concern.
Alarm bells started ringing loudly more than four years ago with a study published in the journal Environment International. It found that 80% of the people tested had microplastics in their blood.
Labs immediately started popping up, promising to measure your level of microplastics. The blood testing kits generally start at $135 and can be five times that.
Dr. Sathyanarayana has been studying plastics her entire career. She says - don’t waste your money.
“We’re much better at measuring right now than understanding the health consequences of the particles themselves.”
Plastics are impossible to avoid. Dr. Sathyanarayana says you likely have microplastics in your blood, but the science doesn’t exist yet to determine which microplastic particles are leaching into your body – and which are passing through cleanly.
She also says the advice for keeping levels down doesn’t change, no matter the level of microplastics that may be detected.
“Whatever we eat or drink is probably the largest source that we can control,” Dr. Sathyanarayana says as she takes us into the breakroom at her research facility.
As soon as she opens the refrigerator door, she spies plastics directly contacting food: the plastic-coated paper used to wrap a deli sandwich, the plastic bottle of a sports drink, a Tupperware container, a plastic to-go container, and the list goes on.
What’s next to the fridge is what really caught her eye, “This is one of the things I would really like people to avoid,” she says as she walks up to the Keurig machine. “So you put a pod in that’s plastic, then you put the hot water through it, then you put it in a paper cup that has plastic coating.”
Anytime that plastic is heated, it makes it more unstable, so Dr. Sathyanarayana’s first and easiest advice is to avoid plastic that is being warmed. That includes plastic kitchen utensils, plastic food containers, and even synthetic gym clothing. When it comes to plastic food containers, she advises staying totally clear of those marked with plastic recycling numbers 3, 6, or 7, which are harder to recycle and contain more harmful chemicals.
Even if you monitor your own food and drink, you’ll be exposed to plastic.
One quick trip to Golden Gardens with Puget Soundkeeper Alliance proves the point. They did a very small survey of less than an acre of the beach. Within five minutes, they filled a tray with plastic scraps: cigarette butts, synthetic fibers from beach towels, plastic stickers peeled off fruit, etc.
“I mean, these pieces of plastic will be here longer than I’m alive,” says Clean Water Program Director Anna Bachman, “Longer than you’re alive, longer than our grandchildren will be alive. They’re not going away. They’re getting smaller. They’re being eaten by animals. They’re going through the food chain. They’re in our bodies. They’re in our brains.”
Executive Director Sean Dixon says by about 2050, there will be more plastics in the ocean than fish. It’s contributing to water pollution, the heating of Earth, and it’s in our food sources. He encourages putting support behind more research on plastics, environmental cleanup, and greater regulation of plastic production.
He points to one example of the hazard to our environment and our health: a stream running from near a parking lot into the Puget Sound. One of the biggest sources of plastic pollution is car tires. He says tires break down into smaller pieces on the roads, rain and storm water push those pieces into the stream, and that stream feeds into the Sound.
The presence and threat of plastics is overwhelming. His advice? “Try to be a little better every day.” He says start with what you can control in your own home, and then advocate for environmental controls, “The real solution is to long-term move away from plastics.”
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