Due to plastic use in everyday lives, plastic often gets in places where it should not be. A commonly known example is in the oceans or even lakes. More plastic is used over the years, making the problem grow even more. Around .5% of all plastic ends up in the ocean.

While plastic getting in larger bodies of water and contaminating it is a major problem, the ocean is not the only place where plastic is getting itself stuck in. Many food and drink products, especially plastic water bottles, contain microplastics, small fragments of plastic under 5 mm in size. From food and water bottles, microplastics find their way into different areas of the body.

While analyzing different blood samples, lung tissues and other fluids, scientists have found substantial amounts of these same microplastics from food and plastic water bottles inside of different organs of the human body, including livers, kidneys, testes and even inside the brain. Possibly the average amount of plastic in a human brain could be around 10 grams, which combined weighs about the same as an unused crayon. 

Currently, no one is certain of what exactly these microplastics are doing or what they are capable of doing to health. Most assume it is more likely to be bad having plastic in the brain rather than good. Because there is almost nothing known about this situation, that means no one knows of any efficient way to remove the plastic.

Science teacher Mr. Dennis Will said, “The best way [to protect against microplastics]  is prevention.”

There are a few ways to prevent microplastics ingestion. These include using a non-plastic water bottle, using less plastic for storing food and washing plastic food containers by hand. 

Staying aware should be a must for everybody, even though there is little known about microplastics. This could be a very serious problem in the future, and knowing about it could help.