Microplastics are everywhere.
Everyday items like clothing, food packaging, cosmetics and car tires shed tiny particles of plastics, which in turn find their way into blood, baby poop, placentas and breastmilk. According to recent research, plastics are even in the intricate, delicate tissue that makes up our lungs.
Research from 2019 suggests that we might breathe in up to 11.3 microplastics per hour, or up to 272 microplastics in 24 hours. And now, a new study published in the journal Physics of Fluids discovered that those plastics can get lodged into our airways and stay there over time.
“People never thought that we could inhale microplastic, so the data is underestimated and the result is more severe,” says Saidul Islam, lead author of the paper and professor at the University of Technology Sydney.
