It’s been more than five decades since Dustin Hoffman’s character in “The Graduate” was offered a kernel of wisdom about the path to prosperity.
“Plastics,” he’s told by Mr. McGuire, the starched corporate executive who offers the advice. “There’s a great future in plastics.”
Plastics have indeed been a game changer for humanity, and the enormous range of cheap, durable plastic goods, from food containers and PVC pipes to polyester clothing and single-use medical products, have inarguably improved life.
The problem, as nearly everyone knows, is that plastics are forever and very little of it has been recycled. The U.N. has estimated that most of the 400 million metric tons churned out annually — a doubling of production since 2000 — will remain on Earth in some form as they are broken down into teeny specks by sunlight, wind and the sea.
Roughly 20 years ago, Richard Thompson, a marine biologist, first discovered a worrisome accumulation of small plastic particles in ocean habitats and coined the word “microplastics.” Since then, scientists have been finding these fragments everywhere, from remote mountain peaks and the Arctic to the ocean seafloor.
In the decade that followed, scientists began to discover microplastics embedded in a wide range of living creatures, including in the seafood we eat. More recently, microplastics have been found inside the human body: in our lungs, our blood, our feces and in breast milk.
In 2021, Italian researchers for the first time identified microplastics in human placenta.
The question, scientists have been asking with increasing urgency, is whether these synthetic, foreign bodies pose a threat to human health.
“We know microplastics are everywhere, we know they are harmful to marine life and to our fisheries, but the research side of how they impact humans is still catching up,” said Imari Walker-Franklin, an environmental engineer and chemistry researcher at RTI International who studies microplastics.
“Plastic People,” a new documentary directed by Ben Addelman and Ziya Tong, surveys the emerging science on microplastics and arrives at a troubling conclusion: The potential health risks associated with plastic pollution are becoming hard to ignore.
The film, which debuts Saturday at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, follows the work of microplastic researchers in a half-dozen countries, including a pair of Turkish scientists who said they recently discovered microplastics inside the human brain. Some of the particles were found deep inside the tissue of cancerous brain tumors.
“The revelation that the human body is full of microplastics is a recent one and I think the implications will become one of the most dominant health and environmental stories of our time,” said Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute and one of the film’s executive producers. “It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, there’s no sheltering yourself from this kind of new pollution.”
Microplastics, fragments less than five millimeters in size that can usually be seen by the naked eye, are not to be confused with nanoplastics, which are smaller than a speck of dust and are often the inadvertent byproduct of plastic production. Research on the potential health effects of nanoplastics is still in its infancy, at least compared with the studies on microplastics, a field that has been rapidly expanding over the past few years.
Scientific evidence of the effects of microplastics on humans is limited, at least in peer-reviewed literature. A study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology in 2022 found that patients with inflammatory bowel disease had a significantly higher amount of microplastics in their feces than those without the disease. A small University of Hawaii study published last November cataloged the growing presence of microplastics in the placentas of new mothers.
And a paper published on Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that people who had microplastics in their cardiovascular systems were at heightened risk for complications from heart attacks and strokes.
The researchers found that microplastics had become embedded in the fatty plaque that clings to the walls of blood vessels, and that patients with plastic-infused plaque were 4.5 times as likely to experience a heart attack, stroke or death compared with those whose plaque was free of microplastics. The study included 312 people who had undergone surgery to remove plaque from the carotid artery in the neck. Researchers followed them for nearly three years.
Dr. Giuseppe Paolisso, an author of the study, said it appeared that microplastics, along with nanoplastics, made those fatty blobs of plaque more frail, increasing the risk that they could dislodge from the artery wall, block the flow of blood in a smaller vessel and prompt a heart attack or stroke.
“This is the first evidence that microplastic pollution in the blood is related to a disease,” said Dr. Paolisso, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli in Caserta, Italy. More research is needed to confirm the findings, he added.
There are a number of theories about how microplastics affect the body. They include the potential for inflammation caused by a foreign body that lodges in human tissue and the toxic compounds that make up many plastics, many of which are known to harm human health.
Nienke Vrisekoop, a microplastics researcher at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands, said she found that immune cells that come in contact with microplastics die three times as quickly than those that do not. She said that the polystyrene commonly used to produce packing materials was especially toxic to the immune cells that consumed them.
Research conducted by another Dutch researcher, Barbro Melgert, found that microplastics inhibited the development of lung structures grown in her lab. Professor Melgert, a respiratory immunologist at the University of Groningen, said nylon seemed to be most damaging to the lung structures. Polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, she discovered, was the least toxic of the plastics she tested.
Professor Melgert is still trying to understand how microplastics affect living cells, but she suspects that the damage may be related to any number of chemicals that can leach from plastics into the human body.
Although she knows the results of the study do not definitively prove harm to humans, nor do they quantify the risks, previous research on nylon factory workers showed extensive lung damage among those exposed to large amounts of nylon particles.
Foreign particulate matter like asbestos, coal dust or cigarette smoke often proves problematic to human health, she noted. “If the particulate is organic and digestible, at least your body can break it down eventually and get rid of it,” Professor Melgert said. “Plastic is different. It can just stay in the lung.”
Image

Credit…Sedat Gündoğdu
The same can most likely be said for microplastics that find their way into the brain. The discovery, arguably the new film’s most significant revelation, was made by two Turkish researchers, Sedat Gündoğdu, a biologist, and Emrah Çeltikçi, a neurosurgeon.
Dr. Gündoğdu, a researcher at Cukurova University, has been studying microplastic pollution since 2016. Over the years, he has collaborated on scores of peer-reviewed studies documenting microplastics in fisheries, soil, table salt and intravenous fluid bags, and his alarm has grown with each new discovery.
It was only a matter of time, he said, before researchers would discover microplastics in the human brain. “It’s scary but not surprising,” he said.
Despite the sense of urgency and doom conveyed by “Plastic People,” Ms. Tong, the co-director and a former host of the Discovery Channel science show “Daily Planet,” hopes the film can inspire change, the way “Silent Spring,” the 1962 book that documented the dangers of agricultural pesticides and helped lead to a ban on DDT, did.
On an individual level, that means encouraging consumers to reduce their reliance on single-use plastics, which make up 40 percent of global plastics production, she said.
But that also means persuading political leaders to take regulatory action. At the moment, Ms. Tong has her eye on a U.N. gathering next month in Ottawa, where delegates from 175 countries will resume negotiations on a treaty proposal that would curb the explosive growth of plastic pollution. The talks have been snagged by industry opposition at times.
“It’s not like we need some remarkable new invention to address the problem,” Ms. Tong said. “We just have to use less plastic.”

News
By working together, cells can extend their senses beyond their direct environment
The story of the princess and the pea evokes an image of a highly sensitive young royal woman so refined, she can sense a pea under a stack of mattresses. When it comes to [...]
Overworked Brain Cells May Hold the Key to Parkinson’s
Scientists at Gladstone Institutes uncovered a surprising reason why dopamine-producing neurons, crucial for smooth body movements, die in Parkinson’s disease. In mice, when these neurons were kept overactive for weeks, they began to falter, [...]
Old tires find new life: Rubber particles strengthen superhydrophobic coatings against corrosion
Development of highly robust superhydrophobic anti-corrosion coating using recycled tire rubber particles. Superhydrophobic materials offer a strategy for developing marine anti-corrosion materials due to their low solid-liquid contact area and low surface energy. However, [...]
This implant could soon allow you to read minds
Mind reading: Long a science fiction fantasy, today an increasingly concrete scientific goal. Researchers at Stanford University have succeeded in decoding internal language in real time thanks to a brain implant and artificial intelligence. [...]
A New Weapon Against Cancer: Cold Plasma Destroys Hidden Tumor Cells
Cold plasma penetrates deep into tumors and attacks cancer cells. Short-lived molecules were identified as key drivers. Scientists at the Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology (INP), working with colleagues from Greifswald University Hospital and [...]
This Common Sleep Aid May Also Protect Your Brain From Alzheimer’s
Lemborexant and similar sleep medications show potential for treating tau-related disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease. New research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that a commonly used sleep medication can restore normal sleep patterns and [...]
Sugar-Coated Nanoparticles Boost Cancer Drug Efficacy
A team of researchers at the University of Mississippi has discovered that coating cancer treatment carrying nanoparticles in a sugar-like material increases their treatment efficacy. They reported their findings in Advanced Healthcare Materials. Over a tenth of breast [...]
Nanoparticle-Based Vaccine Shows Promise in Fighting Cancer
In a study published in OncoImmunology, researchers from the German Cancer Research Center and Heidelberg University have created a therapeutic vaccine that mobilizes the immune system to target cancer cells. The researchers demonstrated that virus peptides combined [...]
Quantitative imaging method reveals how cells rapidly sort and transport lipids
Lipids are difficult to detect with light microscopy. Using a new chemical labeling strategy, a Dresden-based team led by André Nadler at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) and [...]
Ancient DNA reveals cause of world’s first recorded pandemic
Scientists have confirmed that the Justinian Plague, the world’s first recorded pandemic, was caused by Yersinia pestis, the same bacterium behind the Black Death. Dating back some 1,500 years and long described in historical texts but [...]
“AI Is Not Intelligent at All” – Expert Warns of Worldwide Threat to Human Dignity
Opaque AI systems risk undermining human rights and dignity. Global cooperation is needed to ensure protection. The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has changed how people interact, but it also poses a global risk to human [...]
Nanomotors: Where Are They Now?
First introduced in 2004, nanomotors have steadily advanced from a scientific curiosity to a practical technology with wide-ranging applications. This article explores the key developments, recent innovations, and major uses of nanomotors today. A [...]
Study Finds 95% of Tested Beers Contain Toxic “Forever Chemicals”
Researchers found PFAS in 95% of tested beers, with the highest levels linked to contaminated local water sources. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), better known as forever chemicals, are gaining notoriety for their ability [...]
Long COVID Symptoms Are Closer To A Stroke Or Parkinson’s Disease Than Fatigue
When most people get sick with COVID-19 today, they think of it as a brief illness, similar to a cold. However, for a large number of people, the illness doesn't end there. The World [...]
The world’s first AI Hospital, developed in China is transforming healthcare
Artificial Intelligence and its developments have had a revolutionary impact on society, and healthcare is not an exception. China has made massive strides in AI integrated healthcare, and continues to do so as AI [...]
Scientists Rewire Immune Cells To Supercharge Cancer-Fighting Power
Blocking a single protein boosts T cell metabolism and tumor-fighting strength. The discovery could lead to next-generation cancer immunotherapies. Scientists have identified a strategy to greatly enhance the cancer-fighting abilities of the immune system’s [...]