They’re the size of a sand grain. At smaller than 5 millimetres (mm), microplastics enter us through the air we breathe, through food we eat and even through skin. They are manufactured at that size for industrial and commercial use such as pellets and personal care products, or they are the result of macroplastics (above […]
They’re the size of a sand grain. At smaller than 5 millimetres (mm), microplastics enter us through the air we breathe, through food we eat and even through skin.
They are manufactured at that size for industrial and commercial use such as pellets and personal care products, or they are the result of macroplastics (above 5 mm) breaking down. Research (such as here and here) has shown their ubiquity everywhere and in everything.
“Plastic debris already contaminates our planet from the poles to the equator, from our highest mountains to our deepest oceans. Over 1,300 species are known to ingest or become entangled in plastic debris with reports of associated harm from the base of the food chain to apex predators,” Richard C. Thompson tells IndiaSpend via email. Thompson is the director of the Marine Institute, School of Biological and Marine Sciences, University of Plymouth, UK.
In September 2024, Thompson and his colleagues published a comprehensive review on microplastics in the journal Science. In their paper, they estimate that microplastics entering the environment to be between 10 and 40 million tonnes per year. For context, a million tonnes is 100 times the weight of the Eiffel Tower. On the current trajectory, this amount could double by 2040.
Speaking of the harm the plastic debris percolating into our bodies and the environment does, Thompson says, “We already see wide scale harm resulting from large items of debris and predictions indicate that harm associated with microplastics will have wide-scale ecological effects in the future.”
Once in the environment, he adds, microplastics will be all but impossible to remove; they will persist and continue to have impacts.
As negotiations are under way at Busan, South Korea, for a global plastic pollution treaty, we explain how microplastics need to be urgently addressed to avoid significant harm to the environment and human life.
‘Contaminants of emerging concern’
Microplastics are part of contaminants of emerging concern or CECs. It is a term used to refer to chemicals or substances that are either relatively new in the environment or that have been present in the environment for a while but are only now being recognised as a possible problem, Oliver Jones explains. He is a professor of analytical chemistry at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.
In an email conversation, Jones elaborated on CECs, saying that they are typically not regulated, and the risk they pose to human or environmental health is not fully understood.
Examples might include things like pharmaceuticals, personal care products, microplastics and nanoplastics, nanoparticles and Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
Over the past two decades, according to the review paper, research focused on the environmental accumulation of microplastics: on shores, in the deep sea, in water, in sea ice, in organisms from invertebrates at the base of the food web to apex predators; in rivers, lakes and streams; in soils; in the atmosphere; even on the top of Mount Everest.
“It is now clear that microplastics contaminate multiple environments on a global scale,” the paper notes.
Emerging research has also shed light on the sources of microplastics, their movement and their travel, and their build-up in the environment and how they change while moving across ecosystems.
This scientific framework is called the microplastic cycle. The estimation of fluxes–movement of microplastics across ecosystems–is an important element of the framework and it blends in environmental chemistry, biology, and human health.
India launched a project to assess the extent of the microplastic crisis.
According to the August 2024 press note, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) started a project called to develop standard protocols for analysing micro and nano-plastics and conducting comparative studies between labs and assessing exposure levels among consumers.
India-specific data on the prevalence of microplastics in various foods, according to the note, “will help understand the extent of microplastic contamination in Indian food and guide the formulation of effective regulations and safety standards to protect public health”.
IndiaSpend wrote to Amit Sharma, the director of science and standards division at FSSAI, for the status of the project. We will update this story when we receive a response.
Microplastics in our daily life and health impacts
Microplastics are very much embedded in our daily lives. Cosmetics, shaving creams, food items, water bottles and even inhalers for asthma are full of microplastics. They also come from bigger plastics that get broken down by temperature or rain or any other element, and we breathe them in and ingest them.
For instance, the environmental research and advocacy organisation Toxics Link recently investigated the extent of occurrence of microplastics in salt and sugar in India. The results of this study show that salt and sugar intended for human consumption, available in the Indian market, are contaminated with microplastics.
“The contamination was irrespective of salt and sugar brands. Notably, iodised salt, which is the most widely used salt in India, showed a significantly high concentration of microplastics,” Satish Sinha, associate director of Toxics Link, tells IndiaSpend.
The particles, he says, “are of different sizes, colours and shapes, and belong to different resin types”.
Even if they are small, variations in their size matters. The study found that smaller microplastics of between 0.1-0.3 mm and 0.3-1 mm are more prevalent than larger ones of 1-5 mm.
“These smaller sizes pose a greater challenge for removal from the environment and increase the likelihood of ingestion by humans or other organisms. Consistent with broader research, fibres were identified as the most common shape of microplastics found,” says Sinha.
He says although there has been considerable research on microplastics in water, soil, and air, there remains a critical need to analyse their presence in consumables–particularly in common items like salt and sugar.
“Our study aims to enable researchers to detect microplastics in a wide range of edible products, increasing public awareness of their prevalence and potential impact.”
India’s sea salts come laden with microplastic fibers and fragments of various sizes.
He further adds that food chain contamination with microplastics is serious and can have a wide impact on human beings on account of the presence of various chemicals used in plastics whose toxicity is well-researched and proven. “Many of these chemicals are known to be endocrine disrupting, carcinogenic and neurotoxic.”
A 2018 article by researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, published in the journal Environmental Science and Pollution Research, found India’s sea salts come laden with microplastic fibers and fragments of various sizes.
In a 2023 review paper in the journal Regional Studies in Marine Science, the authors reviewed 45 papers published between 2013 and 2020 for the prevalence and the type of microplastics in the Indian seas. They say that “marine sediments have a higher concentration of MPs than sea salt, biota, or seawater”. Polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), and polystyrene (PS) form the bulk of microplastics in watery environments.
Microplastics are piling up like sin. A 2023 review paper from IIT Madras researchers, published in the journal Environmental Science and Pollution Research, says that residential houses themselves are a major source of microplastic pollution.
Wastewater carries so many microplastics and pollutes the seas eventually. While acknowledging that, the authors point to microplastic plastic pollution arising from using personal care products, laundry washing, face masks and others.
When zebrafish were subjected to lab-synthesized polyisobutylene microplastics (PIB-MP), their cells died and the fish got deformed, according to a 2024 article from the Indian Institute of Science researchers in the journal Nature.
The damage is deep and wide-ranging: “Zebrafish larvae exposed to various concentrations of PIB-MPs exhibited numerous morphological and molecular changes, including delayed hatching, impaired swimming behavior, increased reactive oxygen species levels, altered mRNA levels of genes encoding antioxidant proteins, and reduced survival rates. Dissections revealed PIB-MP accumulation in the guts of larvae and adult fish within 7–21 days, causing damage to the intestinal mucosa.”
Chemicals such as Bisphenol A (BPA), phthalates, brominated flame retardants are used in plastic manufacturing plastic and they are endocrine disruptors that can damage human health if ingested or inhaled, according to this review paper.
Another study by Columbia University researchers found an average of 240,000 particles in one litre of bottled water. The samples they analysed were from the US. Microplastics are usually denoted by the size between 1 micrometre and 5 millimetres; smaller than 1 micrometre are nanoplastics.
Studies have found traces of microplastics in breast milk, in blood, in lung airways and in lung tissue. They have also been found in the penis, the uterus, the placenta–even in the heart and in the brain. They can cross the blood-brain barrier via olfactory and blood vessels. They are in the gut, and lead to acute colitis and irritable bowel disease (IBD).
Their health impacts, according to this August 2023 paper, consist of oxidative stress, DNA damage, organ dysfunction, metabolic disorder, immune response, neurotoxicity, as well as reproductive and developmental toxicity. In addition, the paper says, the epidemiological evidence suggests that a variety of chronic diseases may be related to microplastics exposure.
According to this September 2022 paper, they can cause cancer. So far, it has been observed that nano- and microplastics might be extremely harmful, leading to serious health conditions, such as cancers of various human body systems.
The problem of microplastics looks insurmountable. How do you flush them off from the environment and from our bodies?
As far their research is concerned, Jones says the field of microplastic research needs standardised methods and approaches to ensure data are of high quality, reproducible and useful. In addition, he suggests avoiding plastic bottles and food packaging can reduce exposure as can having hard floors rather than carpets and regular vacuuming.
We are consumers of plastic; now, plastic is consuming us, our organs, tissues and cells.
This article was originally published on IndiaSpend.
