For years, the conversation around microplastics centered on a simple question: Are they present in the human body?
The answer is now increasingly clear.
Microplastics have been detected in human blood, placentas, lungs, liver tissue, arterial plaque, reproductive organs, and numerous other tissues throughout the body. What was once considered an environmental issue has increasingly become a human health question, and has raised new concerns.
In 2024, researchers publishing in the New England Journal of Medicine reported the presence of microplastics in carotid artery plaque and found that individuals with detectable microplastics in plaque experienced significantly higher rates of heart attack, stroke, and death over the subsequent follow-up period. While the study did not establish causation, it elevated the conversation around microplastics from simple exposure to potential clinical relevance.
That same year, a large systematic review led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco evaluated the growing body of evidence around microplastics and human health. The authors concluded that microplastics are suspected to adversely affect reproductive, digestive, and respiratory health, while identifying emerging concerns around broader chronic disease risks. Importantly, the review highlighted the need for additional human studies to better understand both the biological effects of exposure and potential mitigation strategies.
These findings are part of a broader shift occurring across healthcare, academia, and government. Interest in microplastics has accelerated to the point that federal agencies have launched coordinated initiatives such as the Strategies for Toxicity, Exposure, and Mitigation of Plastics (STOMP) program, which is investing in research to better understand how microplastics are detected, how they affect human health, and ultimately how exposure may be mitigated.
Amidst these major conversations among Americans, a second question has emerged:
If microplastics are present in the human body, can anything be done about it?
That question was the motivation behind our team’s recently published study in the Journal of Clinical Apheresis evaluating Therapeutic Plasma Exchange (TPE) as a potential intervention for circulating microplastics burden.
The results were encouraging.
Among patients with elevated baseline levels of circulating microplastics, we observed significant reductions following treatment. To our knowledge, this is the first published human clinical evidence demonstrating that circulating microplastics can be measurably reduced through a medical intervention.
While we are excited by these findings, it is equally important to discuss what they do—and do not—tell us.
First, this study does not establish that microplastics cause disease. Nor does it prove that reducing microplastics improves clinical outcomes. Those are important questions that will require considerably more research.
What the study does demonstrate is something more foundational: circulating microplastics are measurable, and in many patients, they appear responsive to intervention.
That may sound like a modest conclusion, but it represents an important shift. Scientific progress often begins by establishing what can be measured before determining what should be treated.
The findings also reinforced another important lesson: environmental burden is highly individual. Not every patient enters treatment with the same level of exposure. Some patients in this study presented with substantially elevated circulating microplastics levels. Others had very little detectable burden at baseline.
Interestingly, a subset of patients with very low initial levels experienced small increases following treatment. We chose to report those findings openly because we believe scientific transparency is essential to the advancement of this field.
One likely explanation is the reality that modern medicine relies heavily on plastic-based materials, including IV bags, tubing, collection systems, and other disposable clinical components. As our ability to detect microplastics becomes more sophisticated, it is increasingly possible to identify trace contributions from the healthcare environment itself. This is something that researchers and the medical community should be paying close attention to.
Plasma collection bags in a clinical setting
Importantly, these increases were small and did not alter the primary conclusion of the study. Patients with moderate to high baseline burden experienced meaningful reductions following TPE. What these findings do underscore is the importance of a diagnostics-led approach.
I do not believe every patient should be treated the same way. Just as physicians use laboratory testing to guide decisions around cholesterol, glucose, inflammation, or hormones, I believe environmental burden should be measured before assumptions are made about intervention. This is another key learning for those of us continuing to study important advances in this space.
Those questions matter because environmental exposure is not distributed equally. Occupational factors, geography, lifestyle, water sources, diet, and countless other variables influence the burden each individual carries. This is one reason our work does not stop with this publication.
These new study findings expand real-world data collection efforts, pursuing longitudinal research, and developing more advanced diagnostic approaches to better characterize environmental burden over time. We are also exploring procedural optimizations that may further reduce trace plastic exposure during treatment itself, particularly for patients with very low baseline levels.
That work is ongoing, and frankly, it should be. Science rarely advances through a single study. Progress comes through iteration, transparency, and a willingness to follow the data wherever it leads.
For those of us working in longevity medicine, this study also represents something larger. For decades, longevity science focused primarily on genetics and age-related disease. Today, we increasingly recognize that cumulative environmental exposures—the air we breathe, the water we drink, the substances we encounter every day—may play an important role in long-term health and aging.
Understanding those exposures, measuring them accurately, and ultimately determining how they can be addressed may become one of the defining scientific challenges of the next decade.
We are still at the beginning of that journey. But every field starts somewhere, and these findings most certainly set us on the right path.
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