Tag Archives: plastics and brain

How Microplastics Enter Plants

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Plastic production is increasing sharply. This has raised concerns about the effects of microplastics (typically defined as plastic particles smaller than 5 millimetres in diameter) and nanoplastics (smaller plastic particles that are less than 1,000 nanometres in diameter) on human health. These concerns are partly influenced by alarming findings of the presence of microplastics in various human tissues, including the brain and placenta.

Most attention is focused on soil and water as common sources of plastics that enter the food chain. However, writing in Nature, Li et al. provide strong evidence supporting the air as being a major route for plastics to enter plants. Plants can absorb plastic particles directly from the air. Particles in the air can enter leaves through various pathways, such as through structures on the leaf surface called the stomata and through the cuticle. Stomata are small openings made of cells, and the cuticle is a membrane, covered in insoluble wax, that is well suited for absorbing microplastics…

Microplastics can also travel to and enter the plant’s water- and nutrient-transporting system (called the vascular bundle) and from there reach other tissues… Given that leaves are a key part of the food chain, microplastic particles that accumulate here can easily pass to herbivores and crop leaves, both of which can be directly consumed by humans.

Excerpt from Willie Peijnenburg, Plant Leaves Absorb Microplastics—And They End Up in Our Food, Scientific American, Apr. 18, 2025

Plastics Effects on Brain

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The damage caused by plastic pollution goes far beyond the digestive system.

Beneath the skin of seemingly healthy seabirds, new research has revealed the widespread effect of plastics on crucial proteins made by the liver, kidneys and even the brain. Samples taken on Lord Howe Island, which lies between Australia and New Zealand, showed that young birds which appeared healthy were suffering from severe damage to multiple organs. Seabirds which had only eaten less than a gram of plastic were already suffering serious consequences. These impacts extended to the brain, where declines in a crucial protein known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) were similar to levels associated with conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and dementia in other animals…Sable shearwaters, a type of seabird, feed this plastic to their chicks, where it clogs their digestive system so there’s less space left for food. The team even named a specific disease, plasticosis, to describe the scarring that plastic causes inside the stomachs of these seabirds.

Beyond these more obvious impacts, plastic also sheds minute fragments that can travel even deeper into the body. These are known as microplastics if they’re less than five millimetres in size, or nanoplastics if they’re less than a micron….

These tiny plastics have been found in every environment, even inside our own bodies. Recent research suggests that our brains contain around a spoon’s worth of micro- and nanoplastics, but the health impacts of this are still not entirely understood.

Excerpt James Ashworth, Natural History Museum (UK) Plastic pollution causing dementia-like signs in seabird chicks, Mar. 12, 2025