An investigation raised serious doubts over the trustworthiness of research into microplastics.
In recent years thousands of studies have found the presence of tiny fragments of plastic, some smaller than a millionth of a meter, in the human body, which are reported to cause health problems from heart failure to infertility.
But the research is deeply problematic, The Guardian’s environment editor reported. For instance, many studies work by vaporizing samples and analyzing the fumes, but that method cannot reliably tell plastic from fatty tissue, leading to widespread false positives.
One researcher said the attention on microplastics, given the weak evidence, risked “unnecessarily scaring the general population” and led to the rise of quack treatments claiming to clean microplastics from blood.