Microplastics are in many of your body’s organs and tissues

Whether it’s our food supply and how it’s packaged, our dwellings, furnishings and clothing or even our environment, there is almost no avoiding plastic in some way, shape or form.
While plastic makes our lives easier in countless ways — can you imagine life without shoes, computers or cars? — there’s also no denying that plastics are choking our environment. And leaders can’t agree on how to tame this monster we have created.

Plastics also affect our health in ways we are only just beginning to understand.

Microplastics and nanoplastics — incredibly tiny bits of plastic that break off and shed from larger products — have made their way into many of the tissues of our bodies , including our brain, reproductive organs (both male and female), and cardiovascular system

“It’s much more pervasive than meets the eye,” Dr. Leonardo Trasande, the director of environmental pediatrics and the vice chair for pediatric research at NYU School of Medicine, recently told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on his podcast Chasing Life. Trasande has spent the last two decades studying how environmental exposures, including to microplastics, affect our health.

“We eat a lot of plastic. We inhale a lot of plastic” in the form of dust, Trasande said. “We literally use cosmetics that resorb in our body… We’ve just come to accept plastic as normal. And it’s not normal.”

What can you do to reduce your exposure to microplastics and nanoplastics? Trasande has these five tips.