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 the level of microplastics in your blood. The 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 everywhere you look. It is impossible to avoid them. And Dr. Sathyanarayana says you likely have microplastics in your blood, but the science doesn’t exist yet to determine how much of the microplastic particles are passing through without leaching into your body.
She also says the advice for keeping levels down doesn’t change no matter the level of microplastics that may be detected.
Tuesday on KIRO 7 News at 5:30 pm, we’ll go over her best advice for avoiding chemicals, including the number one thing she would get rid of in your kitchen now.
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