The plastic inside us: how microplastics may be reshaping our bodies and minds

Linda Geddes with the Plastictox blood test kit. ‘It’s hard not to look around my plastic-coated life and wonder how I might start to unwrap it.’ Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/The Guardian

Microplastics have been found almost everywhere: in blood, placentas, lungs – even the human brain. One study estimated our cerebral organs alone may contain 5g of the stuff, or roughly a teaspoon. If true, plastic isn’t just wrapped around our food or woven into our clothes: it is lodged deep inside us.

Now, researchers suspect these particles may also be meddling with our gut microbes. When Dr Christian Pacher-Deutsch at the University of Graz in Austria exposed gut bacteria from five healthy volunteers to five common microplastics, the bacterial populations shifted – along with the chemicals they produced. Some of these changes mirrored patterns linked to depression and colorectal cancer.