Researchers who examined lung samples from 100 people undergoing bronchoscopy found microplastic particles in 70 percent of them and found them more often and in greater quantity among the 50 patients later diagnosed with lung cancer than among the 50 who were not.
Detectable microplastics appeared in airway wash samples from 66 percent of patients with cancer compared with 46 percent of those without. Across all samples, investigators counted 232 particles. When each patient's airway wash and tissue results were analyzed together, patients with cancer were both more likely to have detectable microplastics and had a higher total burden.
