While many of us aware of the environmental damage by plastic, fewer people about the threat from the ubiquity of microplastics. Scientists first them in our bodies more than a decade ago. Worryingly, researchers have now found them in the human heart. Scientists at the Beijing Anzhen Hospital in China cardiac tissue samples from 15 patients heart surgery. After the samples, they tiny pieces of plastic, from a multitude of sources. They a plastic commonly used as a shatter-proof alternative to glass, a polythene widely in clothing and food containers, and a polyvinyl chloride used in construction.
The scientists finding, "tens to thousands of individual microplastic pieces in most tissue samples". Chemicals from microplastics are into the body, potentially to allergic reactions, cancer, cell death, and chronic inflammation, among other complications. Scientists the average person around five grams of microplastics a week, or 52,000 particles a year. Microplastics are so prevalent that they up 39 per cent of dust particles in our homes. Scientists say these tiny shards are near-impossible to from the body. They say it is becoming critical to the amount of plastic we in, ingest, swallow or .
