Exclusive: The discovery shows the particles can travel around the body and may lodge in organs
Highlights
- Microplastic particles found in almost 80% of people tested in their blood.
- Impact on human health is as yet unknown but researchers are concerned as microplastics cause damage to human cells in the laboratory and air pollution particles are already known to enter the body and cause millions of early deaths a year.
- Microplastics are 10 times higher in the faeces of babies compared with adults and that babies fed with plastic bottles are swallowing millions of microplastic particle a day.
- The discovery shows the particles can travel around the.
- body and may lodge in organs and may trigger disease, say Dutch scientists.
- The research is published in the journal Environment International and adapted existing techniques to detect and analyse particles as small as 0.0007mm.