Once inside the body, these tiny particles accumulate in various organs and enter the circulatory system, potentially causing harmful health effects. Microplastics are found in biological fluids and organs such as semen, breast milk, urine, arteries, brain, liver, lung, heart, and the placenta, the reports suggested.
By Salam Rajesh
The dialogue on the menace of single-use plastic waste has become all too intensive, and alarming, with recent disclosures that the threat is more real than earlier perceived. The latest bombshell is that tiny plastic particles were found in human egg and sperm fluids.
Tiny bits of decomposed or degraded plastic material, termed as ‘macroplastic’, ‘mesoplastic’, ‘microplastic’, ‘nanoplastic’, and so forth, are considered a threat to human health and the natural ecosystems.
Earlier, disturbing reports emerged of these tiny bits of plastic material contained in the mother’s womb and of the possible transfer of the microplastic contained to the unborn child through the placenta, thereby threatening the health of the yet-to-be-born baby.
Jordan Joseph writing for Earth.com last week quoted an astounding report from the journal ‘Human Reproduction’, published by Oxford University Press for the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE), that the threat is more real now considered that microplastics were observed contained in human egg and sperm fluids. The threat is, therefore, more real and intensive even before the human child takes form in the to-be-mother’s womb.
It is like these tiny bits of plastic particles, sometimes barely visible to the naked eye, more in the form of the threatening microplastics, are playing Gods – deciding whether a child shall be born free of its threats or it would be born diseased without any fault of its own.
The report detailed that a research team led by Dr. Emilio Gómez‑Sánchez of Next Fertility Murcia in Spain scanned follicular fluid from 29 women and seminal fluid from 22 men. The team found microplastics in 69 percent of the women and 55 percent of the men they studied.
Underscoring the diagnosis of plastic bits in human reproductive fluids, the study team reported they detected polymers such as polytetrafluoroethylene and polypropylene that are usually found contained in coatings of frying pans and food packaging.
In 2021, Italian obstetricians had spotted twelve plastic fragments in every placenta they examined, confirming that particles smaller than five millimeters can cross the maternal-fetal, the study observed.
Other research studies had revealed that microplastics were observed in lung tissue removed during surgery, indicating that inhalation can be a delivery route for the plastic dust. Meantime, researchers in Netherlands had measured plastic mass circulating in human blood samples, explaining how the plastic fragments migrate to different tissues, the report said.
Dr. Gómez’s team had reported that most reproductive samples contained only one or two plastic particles, amounts considered low compared with overall debris in the fluids, yet, fertility specialists noted that even trace metals can derail embryo development.
Yet in another report, Tessa Koumoundouros writing in the scientific journal ‘Health’ (February 2025) while asserting that microplastics ‘could accumulate in our brains more than in kidneys and livers’, referred to University of New Mexico health scientist Alexander Nihart and colleagues who found greater concentrations of these “problematic petrochemical leftovers” in brain samples than in samples of kidneys and livers.
Postmortem brain samples collected in 2024 contained more microplastics than similar samples collected ten years back, asserts Nihart and team, indicating that the tiny synthetic particles can accumulate considerably in human vital organs over time.
The studies entailed that the human body is exposed to microplastics through inhalation, ingestion of contaminated food and water, and dermal contact, and, whereas, drinking water, and everyday food items like salt, crop plants, and fishery products are found to contain microplastics.
Once inside the body, these tiny particles accumulate in various organs and enter the circulatory system, potentially causing harmful health effects. Microplastics are found in biological fluids and organs such as semen, breast milk, urine, arteries, brain, liver, lung, heart, and the placenta, the reports suggested.
The other suggested issue of serious concern is of microplastics entering the human food system through plastic waste contamination in soil and their transfer to the food system through the consumption of vegetable and plants as food, and medicine.
Environmental biotechnologist Joseph Boctor, from Murdoch University in Australia, led a research team that reviewed nearly 200 scientific papers to track how plastics, and the chemicals they are made with, enter farmlands and the fresh produce.
The team estimated that in Europe and North America alone, thousands of tons of microplastics end up in agricultural soils every year. Boctor and team observed that ‘acting as a long-term sink, soil accumulates these recalcitrant pollutants over time, with an estimated 22,500 tons of microplastics introduced into the United Kingdom soils annually through fertilizers and additives’.
Boctor and team (Environmental Sciences Europe, 2025) noted that in the human body, micro- and nano-sized plastic particles are linked to increased male fertility issues, heart and blood vessel damage, hormone disruptions, brain neuron degeneration, and DNA damage amongst other medical issues.
The more damaging report of serious concern was that studies had found that the petrochemical substances used to produce plastics, subsequently translated into micro- and nanoplastics, can be transferred from mother to baby through the placenta, thereby endangering the lives of the yet-to-be-born babies.
Meanwhile, the French food safety agency, ANSES, in a study had revealed that drinks sold in glass bottles contain more microplastics than those sold in plastic bottles or in metal cans. The team discovered that most of the microplastic particles found in glass bottles came from the paint on the caps that seal them. These caps often rub against each other during storage, creating tiny scratches that release plastic particles. The shape, colour, and type of plastic found in the drinks matched the plastic used in the cap paint, according to the study team.
Based on this alarming finding, it may be assessed that greater harm from microplastic contamination affecting human health seriously arise from the release of the tiny bits of plastic particles contained in chemicals painted on bottle caps, rather than from the body of the bottle itself.
The gist of the story could be humans are nowhere safe from the haunt of the plastics menace, which in fact is that very story of the Frankenstein – a semi-humanoid monster created by the very hands of man, so much like plastics were created by humans in the very first place.