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Scientists are raising serious doubts about widely reported claims that microplastics are accumulating in human organs and causing severe health harm, citing major flaws in the methods used to detect them.
Scientists dispute the methods used to link microplastics to human health risks
Concerns were triggered by a recent letter published in Nature Medicine which questioned the analytical techniques used to identify microplastics and nanoplastics in human tissue.
The authors warned that many studies lack proper controls and validation, increasing the risk of false positives.
One of the signatories, Dr Dusan Materic of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany, argued that body fat can be mistaken for polyethylene during analysis, suggesting the obesity epidemic could be skewing results.
The letter followed a Guardian article describing the issue as a potential “bombshell” for the field.
Dr Fazel Monikh, of the University of Padua in Italy, said he has never observed the types of microplastics reported in recent studies.
He told The Telegraph: “When particulate materials enter a living organism, including the human body, they undergo biotransformation. “For these reasons, most of the presented results and their interpretation are not scientifically convincing to me, nor to my colleagues who are experts in this field.”
There is strong evidence that humans ingest tens of thousands of plastic particles each year, with microplastics first detected in stool samples in 2018.
The dispute centres on whether smaller particles, known as nanoplastics, embed in tissues and cause long-term harm.
Fay Couceiro, professor of environmental pollution at the University of Portsmouth, said: “I don’t think that there is any doubt that there are microplastics in us… I think the question raised is more about where in the body they are stored and what quantity there is.”
Detecting nanoplastics remains particularly challenging. Unlike larger particles, which can be visually identified, nanoplastics must be burned and analysed by emitted gases, a technique scientists say is still unreliable.
Despite the criticism, others warn against dismissing the risks. Prof Philip Landrigan of Boston College said: “The Guardian article is accurate in pointing out that there is work to be done… But the Guardian is wrong in implying that this whole area of science is rubbish.”
For now, researchers remain divided, with consensus on the health impacts of microplastics likely years away.
