Plastic and human health: a micro issue?
Wright SL, Kelly FJ (2017). Environmental Science & Technology.
What they found
An early, widely cited review of how microplastics might harm people: through particle toxicity and immune responses if inhaled or ingested, leaching of additives and monomers, and microbes carried on particles. It concluded health effects were unknown and exposure data were the key gap.
- What it can't tell you
- Literature to September 2016, before any human tissue measurements. Mechanisms are proposed from related fields, not demonstrated for microplastics.
- Funding
- UK Medical Research Council (per Europe PMC)
- Topics
- Health effects, In the body
- Checked against
- Abstract (Europe PMC, PMID 28531345)