By now, you’ve seen enough headlines to be sufficiently freaked out about microplastics. They’re everywhere: Our water bottles, our brains, our bones—hell, they’ve even infiltrated the waters of the Arctic, where no humans even live. The latest culprit that really hits close to home? Your cup of tea. A recent study found that brewing tea with polymer-based teabags causes “significant release” of microplastics. Is nothing sacred, anymore?!
Arguably, the only thing more frustrating than learning about all of these potential sources of plastic exposure (and what it could potentially mean for your long-term health) is the fact that the answer to “what can I do?” is still extremely vague. It’s really easy to read a headline and conclude that you need to throw away almost everything in your house and go into debt buying completely new, plastic-free replacements to avoid microplastics. But not only is that unrealistic, it may not even be totally necessary: There’s a lot about microplastics that experts themselves are still trying to figure out.
If you’ve had it up to here with the microplastics mayhem, we got you. SELF spoke to experts about the latest science, how much you really need to worry about microplastics, and what you can actually do to cut down on your exposure without spiraling.
What’s the deal with microplastics?
Microplastics refer to “any kind of plastic that’s less than five millimeters,” Christy Tyler, PhD, a professor of environmental science at the Rochester Institute of Technology who studies plastic pollution, tells SELF. That’s smaller than a grain of rice, Dr. Tyler says. (A subset, called nanoplastics, are so tiny we can’t see them.) These small particles are found in a ton of different items—including stuff you might not think of as plastic, like your spandex biker shorts and other things made with similar “synthetic” materials. And most plastics have other chemicals added to them, Dr. Tyler says (to make them more flexible or flame-retardant, for instance). For example, anything starting with“poly-” is typically a form of plastic made with a combo of materials—i.e., polyethylene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride, and polyurethane (a.k.a. spandex).
We find microplastics everywhere: in our stuff, yes, but also the ocean, the soil, and freshwater sources where we get water for drinking and crops (thanks to pollution and littering, Dr. Tyler says). These particles in the environment can get inside our bodies when we swallow them, inhale them, or touch them with our skin. The exact amount that enters, and what it does once it’s inside, is all still very unclear.
“We know that plastics are in your body,” Dr. Tyler says, “but we don’t know what they’re doing.” A growing body of evidence suggests nothing good. Scientists are still figuring out how exactly microplastics could be harmful, but the overall theory is that both the particles and chemicals contained in them may cause inflammation and oxidative stress, Tracey J. Woodruff, PhD, MPH, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at UCSF who has researched microplastics, tells SELF. Inflammation is a natural process that the body uses to heal itself (think: redness and swelling when you break a bone and your body’s defenses rev up and send extra blood and nutrients to the site to repair it). But when your cells are chronically in fight mode, it can overstress and damage tissues, putting you at risk of developing inflammation-fueled diseases, like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and more. The thought is that the body recognizes these plastic particles and chemicals as foreign invaders, flipping the inflammatory response on.
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