Quantitation and identification of microplastics accumulation in human placental specimens using pyrolysis gas chromatography mass spectrometry
Garcia MA, Liu R, Nihart A, et al. (2024). Toxicological Sciences.
What they found
Pyrolysis-GC/MS reported microplastics in all 62 placentas, from 6.5 to 685 µg per gram of tissue (mean 126.8 µg/g). Polyethylene made up 54% of the plastic mass; PVC and nylon about 10% each.
- Sample
- 62 placentas
- What it can't tell you
- No health outcomes measured. Py-GC/MS polyethylene and PVC readings in tissue are now disputed because lipids can mimic them. As benchmarks, fluorescence microscopy found particles over 1 µm but no nano-sized ones, and infrared analysis of 10 samples identified rayon, polystyrene and polyethylene; these methods measure different things from Py-GC/MS.
- Funding
- US National Institutes of Health (NIEHS, NIGMS, NIMHD)
- Topics
- In the body, Baby and kids, Methods
- Checked against
- Abstract (Europe PMC, PMID 38366932); Crossref shows no corrections