Microplastic presence in dog and human testis and its potential association with sperm count and weights of testis and epididymis
Hu CJ, Garcia MA, Nihart A, Liu R, Yin L, Adolphi N, Gallego DF, Kang H, Campen MJ, Yu X (2024). Toxicological Sciences.
What they found
Pyrolysis-GC/MS found microplastics in all 23 human and 47 dog testes, with mean totals of 328.44 µg/g in humans and 122.63 µg/g in dogs; polyethylene dominated. In dogs, PVC and PET were negatively correlated with testis weight, and polycarbonate and ABS with lower sperm count.
- Sample
- 23 human and 47 dog testes
- What it can't tell you
- Sperm count was measured only in dogs, so it says nothing directly about human fertility. Human samples were autopsy tissue. Correlations from a small sample, not causation. Same Py-GC/MS approach whose polyethylene and PVC readings in fatty tissue have since been questioned.
- Funding
- NIEHS and NIGMS (NIH) and University of New Mexico centres
- Topics
- In the body, Health effects
- Checked against
- Abstract (Europe PMC, PMID 38745431) and results (PMC11285152) as checked for our article; Crossref shows no corrections