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Are microplastics bad for your health? More rigorous science is needed

Tiny plastic particles are being found everywhere, including in the human brain. But it is not yet clear which findings can be trusted and what they might mean.
By
  1. Jun-Li Xu

    1. Jun-Li Xu is an associate professor at the School of Biosystems and Food Engineering, University College Dublin.

  2. Stephanie Wright

    1. Stephanie Wright is a senior lecturer in environmental toxicology in the Environmental Research Group, School of Public Health, Imperial College London.

  3. Cassandra Rauert

    1. Cassandra Rauert is a senior research fellow at the Minderoo Centre — Plastics and Human Health, Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences, The University of Queensland, Woolloongabba, Australia.

  4. Kevin V. Thomas

    1. Kevin V. Thomas is a professor of environmental health and the director of the Minderoo Centre — Plastics and Human Health, Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences, The University of Queensland, Woolloongabba, Australia.

People clean up a beach that has garbage that washed ashore, and they comb the sands for microplastics.

Microplastics have been found in oceans, lakes, rivers, soils, food and air. Credit: Keyza Widiatmika/NurPhoto via Getty

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In March last year, researchers found that among a group of nearly 300 participants, people who had higher concentrations of plastics in deposits of fat in their arteries (arterial plaques) were more likely to experience heart attacks or strokes, and more likely to die as a result, than those in whom plastics were not detected1. Since it was published, the New England Journal of Medicine study has been mentioned more than 6,600 times on social media and more than 800 times in news articles and blogs.

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Nature 639, 300-302 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00702-2

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Supplementary Information

  1. List of co-signatories

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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