We all have enough plastic in our brain to make a spoon
MDlinx Feb 28, 2025
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“The brain is a sacred space in the body and was designed to be protected from exposures, so it is disconcerting that microplastics have found their way into our brains.” — Angelle Desiree LaBeaud, MD
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“The simplest explanation is that ingestion exposure is increasing proportional to environmental sources.” — Andrew West, PhD
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“I certainly don’t feel comfortable with this much plastic in my brain, and I don’t need to wait around 30 more years to find out what happens if the concentrations quadruple.” — Matthew Campen, PhD, UNM press release
Find more of your peers' perspectives and insights below.
The human brain contains alarmingly high levels of microplastics.
Recent research found that over the past 8 years, concentrations of microplastics in the brain have increased by about 50%.
Nihart AJ, Garcia MA, El Hayek E, et al. Bioaccumulation of microplastics in decedent human brains. Nature Med. 2025.
“I never would have imagined it was this high,” said Matthew Campen, PhD, lead author of the study and Distinguished & Regents’ Professor at UNM College of Pharmacy, in a press statement.
UNM researchers find alarmingly high levels of microplastics in human brains – and concentrations are growing over time [press release]. University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center. February 3, 2025.
“I certainly don’t feel comfortable with this much plastic in my brain, and I don’t need to wait around 30 more years to find out what happens if the concentrations quadruple.”Related: Car crash in the blood vessels
People with dementia have even more
Microplastics are tiny pieces of degraded polymer that can be found in the soil, air, and water. They have also been found throughout the human body including in the kidney, placenta, testes, and liver—but the amount of plastic accumulating in the brain seems to be higher than what has been found in other organs.
Nihart AJ, Garcia MA, El Hayek E, et al. Bioaccumulation of microplastics in decedent human brains. Nature Med. 2025.
Dr. Campen told CNN that the amount of microplastics in the human brain is about equivalent in weight to an entire plastic spoon.
LaMotte S. Human brain samples contain an entire spoon’s worth of nanoplastics, study says. CNN Health. February 3, 2025.
The researchers also found that people who had received a diagnosis of dementia had up to 10 times more plastic in their brains than their peers.
However, researchers said the study did not determine if the higher level of plastic in the brains of people with dementia actually caused dementia symptoms.
UNM researchers find alarmingly high levels of microplastics in human brains – and concentrations are growing over time [press release]. University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center. February 3, 2025.
Ubiquitous toxins
Andrew West, PhD, co-author of the study and a professor at the Duke Center for Neurodegeneration Research, says the increase in concentration of plastic in the brain over the past 8 years is in proportion to the amount of plastic found in the environment.
“As I understand, similar increases have been observed in environmental samples from food and water supplies. The simplest explanation is that ingestion exposure is increasing proportional to environmental sources,” he tells MDLinx.
Experts say the majority of microplastics in the body are ingested as food. The commercial production of meat, in particular, involves concentrations of plastic in the food chain.
“The way we irrigate fields with plastic-contaminated water, we postulate that the plastics build up there,” Dr. Campen said in the press release.
UNM researchers find alarmingly high levels of microplastics in human brains – and concentrations are growing over time [press release]. University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center. February 3, 2025.
“We feed those crops to our livestock. We take the manure and put it back on the field, so there may be a sort of feed-forward biomagnification.”
While the findings of the study aren’t entirely surprising, they are still concerning.
The brain is a sacred space in the body and was designed to be protected from exposures.
“It is disconcerting that microplastics have found their way into our brains, but I am not surprised because nanoplastics can be so tiny,” Angelle Desiree LaBeaud, MD, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at Stanford Medicine who co-founded the university’s interdisciplinary Plastics and Health Working Group, tells MDLinx.
“This is very concerning and unfortunate. We are using more and more plastic in our lives with each passing day, so our exposure risk is growing,” she says.
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