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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and now we turn to microplastics. Have you seen this headline? A new study published last month in the journal Nature Medicine found that the human brain may contain up to a spoon's worth of tiny plastic shards. Not a tablespoon or a teaspoon, but the same weight as a disposable spoon was their measure. It's about 7 grams. The rate of accumulation in the brain mirrors the rate of prevalence of plastics in the environment. The amount found in the brain contains roughly 50% more plastic than just eight years ago. Joining us now to explain that study, what that means for health, and how to minimize your exposure to microplastics is Carolyn Kormann, writer with the New Yorker and New York Magazine. Her new piece published in New York, is titled There's a Spoon's Worth of Plastic in Our Brains. Now What? Carolyn, thanks for coming on with us. Welcome to WNYC.

Carolyn Kormann: Thanks so much for having me, Brian. I'm a longtime listener, so it's an honor to be speaking with you.

Brian Lehrer: Great to hear that. Thank you. Listeners might be familiar with the concept of microplastics. We've covered them on the show before, but what is the actual definition? How micro are microplastics?

Carolyn Kormann: Sure. A microplastic is any fragment, film, shard that is smaller than a grain of rice, the size of a grain of rice. And then increasingly, what concerns us is nanoplastics, which are smaller than 1 micron, which is a thousandth of a millimeter.

Brian Lehrer: The study was conducted by a toxicologist named Matthew Campen, I see, who runs a lab at the University of New Mexico College of Pharmacy. His lab obtained brain, liver, and kidney specimens from people who died in either 2016 or 2024. What did they find was the difference between those two years?

Carolyn Kormann: Yes, so this was what was so alarming to me, the brain samples from 2024 had roughly 50% more nanoplastic than the brain samples from 2016. They even got samples going back to 1997, and those samples had even less nanoplastic. The quantity of plastic, the increase in plastic mirrors almost precisely the increase in plastic in our environment.

Brian Lehrer: We know that different things that we take into our bodies tend to concentrate in different organs. In this case, the researchers found that the brain samples they collected had 7 to 30 times more plastic than those from the livers or kidneys.

Carolyn Kormann: Right.

Brian Lehrer: Before we get into what people can do to reduce their exposure, what do we know about what this might mean for human health? As always, correlation is not causation, so we never want to jump to conclusions that aren't proven by the science, or at least indicated by the science. But what studies have you looked at in your research, and what might they suggest?

Carolyn Kormann: Yes, so in terms of neurological function, we're really at the beginning of this research. I mean, the word microplastic wasn't even coined until 2004, and so there's so many questions. But there have been some studies in mice where the mice were exposed to microplastics, and within three weeks, those microplastics had gotten in the rodents' brains, and the mice were showing signs of cognitive dysfunction. They were acting strangely, kind of similar to what dementia might look like in mice, so that work is ongoing.

There's two ways that microplastics can harm our bodies, two main ways. One is particle toxicity, and one is chemical toxicity, because these particles, they get in our bodies, but they're also leaching plastic additives into our bodies, and a lot of those additives are endocrine disruptors. They're bisphenols, we've all heard about BPA, or they're phthalates, which is another word for, or is also known as plasticizers, which make plastics more flexible. And those chemicals have been linked, especially in infants and children, to a wide range of harmful effects, including autism, attention deficit disorder, cancer, various developmental issues. The thing that's interesting about the brain study is that the nanoplastics that Matthew Campen found in the brain samples are so tiny that they might not actually be carrying any of those plastic additives because they're so degraded, which was actually-- to me, it was kind of a silver lining, so any harm they're causing would more likely just be from the particles themselves.

Brian Lehrer: One study that you cited in your article found, as you wrote, that frequently eating from plastic takeout containers can increase the risk of heart failure. Really?

Carolyn Kormann: Yes. It's a small study, but there is some evidence. And yes, I thought New Yorkers might be particularly dismayed to read that.

Brian Lehrer: Another one is that plastic is found in clothing made from stuff like polyester and elastane. Does wearing those materials, according to any science that's been done, increase your exposure, or not really because it's only sitting on your skin?

Carolyn Kormann: Oh, it absolutely increases your exposure. Microfibers are probably the most prevalent type of microplastic on the planet, and what we're ingesting and inhaling most frequently-- one study estimated, and I found this number wild, that just by moving around in synthetic clothing-- and most of our clothing now is synthetic. It's polyester, it's rayon, it's nylon, it's fleece-- that I could be producing as many as 900 million microfibers per year. Just me alone moving around in my synthetic clothes. And then that's in the dust in our house, in our homes, in our offices, and we're breathing it in. It's getting into our water or other beverages, it's in our food while we're cooking-- getting into our food while we're cooking it, so that's a big problem. Very concerning.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Unfortunately, some of that can leave people feeling helpless rather than empowered to take anything under their own control. Like, you have the line in your article, "Listing where microplastics are found in our food and beverages starts to become absurd since the list includes most everything, and that includes the air itself." Just explain that for a minute, even though people are going, "Oh my God."

Carolyn Kormann: Well, nanoplastics especially, they're so light, they're getting swept up into the atmosphere, they're moving with the wind, and so they're in our clouds. Actually, one study found plastics are affecting cloud formation and just weather patterns, but yes, there's a lot of particle particulate matter in our atmosphere, and plastic is now a big portion of that.

Brian Lehrer: And to what you were saying about the clothing, a listener texts, "How important is installing a filter on your laundry waste pipes for collecting microplastics?" You know anything about that?

Carolyn Kormann: It's not something I know, I'm an expert in, but there are these things called guppy bags that you can use when you wash your clothes in your washing machine that prevent some of the plastic from going into the pipes. As far as filters on pipes or in your plumbing, I'm not as familiar. France did pass a law that new washing machines must have filters, and years ago, washing machines were made with better filters in fact. But yes, you can buy these guppy bags, and they are helpful.

Brian Lehrer: You touch on excess packaging in your piece, which a lot of people will think of I think early on in this when they think about this topic, but I wonder if you have a take on excess package in the produce aisle. So many fruits and vegetables are sold now pre-washed in those thin plastic bags. Should those veggies and fruits get an extra rinse?

Carolyn Kormann: Definitely, and I would remove any food-- when you get home from the store, I'd remove food from plastic packaging and store it in glass or metal containers. Also, you can get these instead-- when you go to the grocery store, you could bring your own cloth cotton bags to put your produce into instead of using the plastic bags that we're so used to using. You can buy little mesh bags, cotton mesh bags that are reusable.

Brian Lehrer: Now, to wrap up on a fairly upbeat note, some of the researchers you spoke to remain optimistic about reducing the amount of plastics in the environment and in our bodies. How come?

Carolyn Kormann: Well, I think they recognize that it can be totally overwhelming and very heavy to hear how pervasive plastic is in our environment, and there are ways forward. There should be better simplicity and transparency around chemicals that are used in different plastic formulations. There is an ongoing effort to get a global treaty that would cap plastic production that has been thwarted, and so it might have to be on a more national level, country to country, and waste management systems globally need to be improved. And there just are other materials. I think one option is-- well, one thing that makes me feel better, a very small thing, are Styrofoam peanuts that used to kind of be in boxes all the time, and we know that Styrofoam's bad. Now they're often made with cellulose, which is totally biodegradable and not toxic. One of the scientists in my piece, Austin Gray, did a study on that. That's just one tiny example of, you know, there are ways forward. There are better materials.

Brian Lehrer: Carolyn Kormann, writer with New York Magazine and the New Yorker. Her new piece published in New York Magazine is titled, There's a Spoon's Worth of Plastic in Our Brains. Now What? Thanks for filling in the now what? We really, really appreciate it.

Carolyn Kormann: Thanks so much, Brian. Great to be on with you.

Brian Lehrer: Learned a lot. Brian Lehrer on WNYC. More to come.

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