How Common Plastic Products May Be Impacting Our Health

Nanoplastics are everywhere—from the oceans and soil to your favorite bottled beverages. In 2024, researchers at Columbia published a study that found there are 10 to 100 times more nanoplastics in plastic water bottles than previously estimated.

“Nanoplastics have been found in animals who live far from civilization, like in the arctic,” says Julie Herbstman, PhD, director of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health. “This tells us that they can move through the environment and travel far from where plastic is used. We are only just scratching the surface in terms of what we understand about health effects that may be associated with exposure.”

Microplastic particles—known as microplastics—are plastic products broken down to 5mm (about 0.2 inches) or less. Unfortunately, less does not mean zero. Plastic products never fully disintegrate. Instead, they decompose into neoplastic particles, known as nanoplastics.

Nanoplastic pieces are so tiny they can pass through your intestines (after eating or drinking) and lungs (after breathing) directly into your bloodstream, then to your heart, thyroid, brain, and other organs.

Dr. Herbstman is an environmental epidemiologist who studies patterns of health and disease associated with exposure to physical, chemical, and social factors in our environment. She explains how nanoplastics may impact our health and shares ways to reduce exposure.

Should people worry about exposure to nanoplastics?

It’s a hard question to answer because we don’t really know. 

Most people don’t realize that unlike drugs and vaccines, which are tested before they can be used, most other products and containers, including those made of plastics (and the chemicals used to make them) are not tested for long-term health effects. 

Plastic consumer products include a wide range of items, from food containers and toys to outdoor furniture and garbage bags. Because we are exposed in so many ways, it is hard to know which products might be harmful.

We can conduct animal studies where we dose half of the animals with microplastics and half with a placebo to try to understand the effects of microplastic exposure on health outcomes. But in humans, we really don’t know whether something is safe for our health until after it is in use and studies are done to see what happens, which takes years and years. In this way, we are all guinea pigs.

We know air, soil, waterways, and even foods contain micro- and nanoplastics. What does this mean for our health?

We are starting to see that micro- and nanoplastics are detectable in lots of human tissue samples (such as the liver, lungs, blood, and placenta). Obviously, these plastics are not supposed to be there, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are harmful. We just don’t know enough.

Studies in animals show that exposure to plastics is harmful to organs like the heart, but fewer studies have been conducted on humans. On the one hand, we are not so different from the animals we study in many ways, but more research is needed to confirm that plastics are harmful to humans. In the meantime, the suggestion of harm is there.

In 2024, a study looking at the plastics in plaque removed from the arteries of people with heart disease showed that most people had polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride in their plaque. These individuals were more likely to have a heart attack or stroke or to die within three years of the plaque’s removal.

The study also found that inflammation is higher in people who have plastics in their bodies, compared to those who do not.

What is the #1 thing you wish people knew about nanoplastics?

I wish more people knew that plastics are made from fossil fuels. 

As we shift away from oil and gas to address climate change, oil- and gas-producing industries are finding that they can offset their financial losses by increasing the production of plastic, which requires oil and gas.

Because the oil/gas and plastic industries are tied together, reducing our dependence on plastic is also critical to addressing climate change.