It’s getting harder for me to ignore microplastics. They contaminate our water, food, soil, oceans, and air. The guy in this video says the average adult brain contains as much invasive plastic as a typical plastic fork (5 grams?). These plastics are said to cause medical problems although I’m not sure of the strength of the evidence. Very few physicians know about this issue. The video speaker below talks about nanoplastics but in my experience “microplastics” is more often used. Something nano would be smaller than micro, a thousand times smaller if we’re using the metric system. Colloquially, nano may just be “quite a bit smaller” than micro. Video about this issue was published at YouTube Dec 3, 2025:
The speaker refers to a scientific article published at Nature Medicine on Feb 3, 2025: Bioaccumulation of microplastics in decedent human brains. Seems to me they should have used “nanoplastics” in the title instead of “microplastics.”
Not only are the microplastics allegedly bad for us, they are linked to “forever chemicals” which may mediate the badness. E.g., BPA-like chemicals (bisphenol A).
Are you worried about microplastics in your body?
Click this link to NRDC (National Resources Defense Council) for ten tips to keep plastic out of your body.
Steve Parker, M.D.
Update on December 15, 2025:
Katie Couric interviewed Dr. Matthew J Campen, one of the authors of the study referenced above and a toxicology professor at the University of New Mexico. He impresses me with the idea that his study’s findings are very preliminary and need verification by other labs, and that the implications for how we live today are not clear by any means. He speculates that the nanoplastics he finds in human tissue samples were ingested as nanoparticles that originated in landfills years ago. Discarded plastic waste deteriorated over time, breaking down to nanoparticles that contaminated groundwater and also ended up in agricultural products. Therefore, he suggests that there is not much individuals can do about avoiding nanoplastics except perhaps limiting meat consumption. Dr Campen notes that cutting down on our use of plastics now is more likely to help those a couple generations hence than to help us. He is highly skeptical about any current remedies that purport to remove nanoplastics from our tissues. Yet he suggests that our bodies may indeed have an intrinsic mechanism to reject (eject?) the particles.
Dr Campen does not impress me as a hair-on-fire bomb-thrower. Couric did and impressive job interviewing him.
I may start referring to freshly discarded plastics as macroplastics.
Advanced Mediterranean Diet 