Jauhn Etienne Villaruel

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<div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1769562423188172256159639520240428-manila-breakwater-MD-8265_cropped_processed_by_imagy.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner" style="text-align:left">A wastepicker rummages for recyclable items along a breakwater in Manila on April 28, 2024. Mark Demayo, ABS-CBN News<br/></span></span></span></div><div><br/></div><p>PARIS, France — How many tiny pieces of plastic are currently inside your body?</p><p>A series of headline-grabbing studies in the last few years have claimed to have found microplastics throughout human bodies—inside blood, organs and even brains.</p><div><a href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/business/09/03/19/slave-to-sachets-how-poverty-worsens-plastics-crisis-in-the-philippines">Slave to sachets: How poverty worsens plastics crisis in the Philippines</a></div><p>However, some of this research has recently come under stinging criticism from scientists.</p><p>Some have warned that the studies could not rule out contamination from plastic inside laboratories, or that certain techniques could be confusing human tissue with plastic.</p><p>Seeking a solution to this escalating dispute, 30 scientists from 20 research institutions across the world proposed a new framework on Tuesday for evaluating microplastic research.</p><p>The proposal, inspired by how forensic science weighs evidence found at crime scenes, offers researchers a consistent way to communicate how confident they are that microplastic has actually been detected.</p><p>No one disputes that these mostly invisible pieces of plastic are ubiquitous throughout the environment -- they have been found everywhere from the tops of mountains to the bottom of oceans.</p><div><a href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/2024/8/2/marcos-urged-to-stop-unhampered-plastic-production-following-ncr-floods-814">Marcos urged to stop &#x27;unhampered plastic production&#x27; following NCR floods</a></div><p>It is also &quot;very likely&quot; that we are regularly ingesting microplastics from air and food, Imperial College London researcher Leon Barron told AFP.</p><p>But there is simply not enough evidence yet to say whether they are bad for our health, added the senior author of the new proposal.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>INSIDE OUR BRAINS? </strong></div><div><br/></div><p>Microplastics -- and even smaller nanoplastics -- are very difficult to detect.</p><p>Yet some research in this new and rapidly expanding field has claimed to have found particles in &quot;less-plausible&quot; areas of the human body, Barron explained.</p><p>For example, a study published in Nature Medicine early last year announced it had detected relatively large particles inside the brains of recently deceased people.</p><p>Some scientists were skeptical because this would require the particles to cross the powerful defenses of the blood-brain barrier.</p><div><a href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/health-science/2026/1/27/health-threat-of-global-plastics-projected-to-soar-0825">Health threat of global plastics projected to soar</a></div><p>Experts have also pointed out that the technique used in this study and several others, which is called pyrolysis-GC-MS, can confuse fat with polyethylene, which is commonly used in plastic packaging.</p><p>In February 2025, CNN reported that the study&#x27;s senior author, Matthew Campen of the University of New Mexico, had said the amount of plastic found in a brain sample was equivalent to a plastic spoon.</p><p>However Campen told AFP on Tuesday that &quot;the concept of a &#x27;plastic spoon&#x27; is a media invention&quot;.</p><p>&quot;The biggest issue was extrapolation of a single sample of the brain to the entire brain, which we are now establishing was a meaningful overestimation,&quot; he added.</p><p>He also welcomed the &quot;groundswell of interest&quot; in the subject and said he looked forward to research that &quot;will provide greater confidence and accuracy in micro- and nanoplastics measurements&quot;.</p><p>Other research has been disparaged for not using proper quality-control measures.</p><p>Without these measures, &quot;it is impossible to know whether detected plastics originate from the tissue itself or from containers, chemicals, laboratory equipment or plastic particles present in the air,&quot; researcher Dusan Materic told AFP.</p><p>This would mean the results are &quot;simply not scientific&quot;, said the expert at Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>INSPIRED BY FORENSIC SCIENCE </strong></div><div><br/></div><p>The new framework proposal, published in the journal Environment &amp; Health, calls for researchers to use several different techniques when looking for microplastics to rule out any potential false positives.</p><p>Barron compared the proposal to a framework once agreed among forensic scientists about how to evaluate fibers found in clothes during a criminal investigation.</p><p>The idea is to bring &quot;all of the different labs doing this type of work into an aligned language&quot; that expresses how confident they are that they detected microplastic, he said.</p><p>The idea is already &quot;starting to gain momentum&quot;, he added.</p><p>The proposal requires scientists and journal articles to be transparent about their research, release all the raw data and include quality-control measures.</p><p>&quot;To be clear, microplastics are a problem,&quot; Barron emphasized.</p><p>All the research conducted thus far has been carried out in good faith, he said, adding that these are relatively normal growing pains for a new scientific field.</p><p>But precision is important -- to determine whether microplastics are harmful for our health, researchers need to know just how much of them is in our bodies.</p><p>If the ongoing scientific debate &quot;derails that effort to try and understand if they&#x27;re bad for us, that&#x27;s not helpful&quot;, he said.</p><p>Campen said that rather than a debate, &quot;what we are seeing is the scientific method.&quot;</p><p>&quot;The challenges of detecting and quantifying nanoplastics -- shards of plastic the size of viruses -- demand intense attention, innovation, as well as scrutiny,&quot; he added.</p><div><br/></div><div><br/></div><div><strong>© Agence France-Presse</strong></div><div><br/></div><div><br/></div><div><strong>RELATED VIDEOS:</strong></div><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iRSbk_WVXv0?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable"></iframe></span><u></u><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gUwd8s5_zOg?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable"></iframe></span><br/></div>

<p>Thirty scientists from 20 research institutions across the world proposed a new framework for evaluating microplastic research.</p>

Thirty scientists from 20 research institutions across the world proposed a new framework for evaluating microplastic research.

How to assess microplastics in our bodies? Scientists have a plan

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How to assess microplastics in our bodies? Scientists have a plan

Daniel Lawler,

Agence France-Presse

Published Jan 28, 2026 09:08 AM PHT

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