{"id":25537,"date":"2025-04-08T07:05:32","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T07:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=25537"},"modified":"2025-04-08T07:25:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T07:25:00","slug":"the-lab-racing-to-find-out-what-microplastics-are-doing-to-our-bodies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=25537","title":{"rendered":"The Lab Racing to Find Out What Microplastics Are Doing to Our Bodies"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Inside a New Mexico lab, researchers estimate there is five bottle caps worth of plastic in human brains. Now they are trying to find out its effects.<\/p>\n

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In a basement laboratory at the University of New Mexico, Marcus Garcia rummaged through a bin full of plastic waste. He picked past bottles, chunks of fishing net, a toothbrush, a cup with a Pokemon character and a G.I. Joe.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes!\u201d he exclaimed, holding up a discarded pipette tip. \u201cFound it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Dr. Garcia, a postdoctoral fellow in pharmaceutical sciences, discovered the pipette tip last summer with colleagues on a remote Hawaii beach. It was miraculously intact though it had most likely been degraded for years by sun, ozone and the ocean. How poignant, he thought. It was an object he and thousands of other scientists used every day. And there it was, washed up on a beach along with hundreds of pounds of other plastic waste they were now cleaning up and collecting for research.<\/p>\n

Dr. Garcia is part of a leading lab, run by toxicologist Matthew Campen, that is studying how tiny particles known as microplastics accumulate in our bodies. The researchers\u2019 most recent paper<\/a>, published in February in Nature Medicine, generated a string of alarmed headlines and buzz in the scientific community: They found that human brain samples from 2024 had nearly 50 percent more microplastics than brain samples from 2016.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThis stuff is increasing in our world exponentially,\u201d Dr. Campen said. As it piles up in the environment, it is piling up in us, too.<\/p>\n

Some of the researchers\u2019 other findings have also prompted widespread concern. In the study, the brains of people with dementia had far more microplastics than the brains of people without it. In papers last year, the researchers showed that microplastics were present in human testes<\/a> and placentas<\/a>. Other scientists have also documented them in blood, semen, breast milk and even a baby\u2019s first stool<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Inside a New Mexico lab, researchers estimate there is five bottle caps worth of plastic in human brains. Now they are trying to find out its effects.In a basement laboratory at the University of New Mexico, Marcus Garcia rummaged through a bin full of plastic waste. He picked past bottles, chunks of fishing net, a toothbrush, a cup with a Pokemon character and a G.I. Joe.\u201cYes!\u201d he exclaimed, holding up a discarded pipette tip. \u201cFound it.\u201dListen to this article with reporter commentaryDr. Garcia, a postdoctoral fellow in pharmaceutical sciences, discovered the pipette tip last summer with colleagues on a remote Hawaii beach. It was miraculously intact though it had most likely been degraded for years by sun, ozone and the ocean. How poignant, he thought. It was an object he and thousands of other scientists used every day. And there it was, washed up on a beach along with hundreds of pounds of other plastic waste they were now cleaning up and collecting for research.Dr. Garcia is part of a leading lab, run by toxicologist Matthew Campen, that is studying how tiny particles known as microplastics accumulate in our bodies. The researchers\u2019 most recent paper, published in February in Nature Medicine, generated a string of alarmed headlines and buzz in the scientific community: They found that human brain samples from 2024 had nearly 50 percent more microplastics than brain samples from 2016.\u201cThis stuff is increasing in our world exponentially,\u201d Dr. Campen said. As it piles up in the environment, it is piling up in us, too.Some of the researchers\u2019 other findings have also prompted widespread concern. In the study, the brains of people with dementia had far more microplastics than the brains of people without it. In papers last year, the researchers showed that microplastics were present in human testes and placentas. Other scientists have also documented them in blood, semen, breast milk and even a baby\u2019s first stool.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25539,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25537"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25540,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25537\/revisions\/25540"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}