Adults may inhale roughly 68,000 lung-penetrating plastic particles each day, far exceeding past estimates, according to French researchers who sampled air in homes and cars.
Sharon Udasin reports for The Hill.
In short:
- The Université de Toulouse team measured microplastics smaller than 10 micrometers, a size able to lodge deep in the lungs.
- Car cabins showed the highest levels, averaging 2,238 particles per cubic meter, compared with 528 particles per cubic meter in apartment air.
- Their calculations suggest total inhalation of these tiny fragments is roughly 100 times greater than previous estimates, pointing to a significant gap in current exposure assessments.
Key quote:
“We inhale thousands of them every day without even realizing it. Deep inside our lungs, microplastics release toxic additives that reach our blood and cause multiple diseases.”
— Nadiia Yakovenko and Jerome Sonke, co-lead authors of the study
Why this matters:
Invisible plastics have become a ubiquitous ingredient of modern life, shredding from synthetic clothes, crumbling car interiors, even the scuff of a sneaker on vinyl flooring. Once airborne, specks smaller than a red blood cell can surf household currents, slip past the nose’s natural filters and embed in lung tissue, where laboratory studies find they can stoke inflammation and ferry endocrine-disrupting additives into the bloodstream. Epidemiologists already link higher microplastic levels to asthma, cardiovascular stress, and impaired immune responses, yet routine air monitoring rarely measures particles this small. As evidence of indoor contamination mounts, exposure is poised to grow: Global plastic production topped 460 million tons last year and remains on a steep, fossil-fuel-driven climb.
Learn more: Microplastics permeate food and air across the globe
