(NewsNation) — The level of microplastics in human brains has increased by 50% over the past eight years, a study released this month found.
Microplastics are tiny plastic pieces less than five millimeters long, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They are harmful to the ocean and aquatic life.
In recent years, microplastics have been appearing more in human brains, University of New Mexico Health Sciences researchers discovered, publishing their findings in the Nature Medicine research journal.
People with dementia had up to 10 times more plastic in their brains, according to the study.
“These results highlight a critical need to better understand the routes of exposure, uptake and clearance pathways and potential health consequences of plastics in human tissues, particularly in the brain,” the study said.
The researchers noted they have not determined whether microplastics are causing dementia but there is an association between the two.
They analyzed liver, kidney and brain tissue from autopsies conducted between 2016 and 2024 with approval from the University of New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator.
It’s unclear how microplastics end up in the brain. Still, lead researcher and toxicologist Matthew Campen said in a news release that most microplastics are ingested through food, especially meat bought at grocery stores.
“The way we irrigate fields with plastic-contaminated water, we postulate that the plastics build up there,” Campen said. “We feed those crops to our livestock. We take the manure and put it back on the field, so there may be a sort of feed-forward biomagnification.”
