We all have enough plastic in our brain to make a spoon

By Elizabeth Pratt | Fact-checked by Barbara Bekiesz

Published February 27, 2025

Key Takeaways

Industry Buzz

“The brain is a sacred space in the body and was designed to be protected from exposures, so it is disconcerting that microplastics have found their way into our brains.” — Angelle Desiree LaBeaud, MD
“The simplest explanation is that ingestion exposure is increasing proportional to environmental sources.” — Andrew West, PhD
“I certainly don’t feel comfortable with this much plastic in my brain, and I don’t need to wait around 30 more years to find out what happens if the concentrations quadruple.” — Matthew Campen, PhD, UNM press release

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The human brain contains alarmingly high levels of microplastics.

Recent research found that over the past 8 years, concentrations of microplastics in the brain have increased by about 50%.^[]

“I never would have imagined it was this high,” said Matthew Campen, PhD, lead author of the study and Distinguished & Regents’ Professor at UNM College of Pharmacy, in a press statement.^[] “I certainly don’t feel comfortable with this much plastic in my brain, and I don’t need to wait around 30 more years to find out what happens if the concentrations quadruple.”

People with dementia have even more

Microplastics are tiny pieces of degraded polymer that can be found in the soil, air, and water. They have also been found throughout the human body including in the kidney, placenta, testes, and liver—but the amount of plastic accumulating in the brain seems to be higher than what has been found in other organs.^[]

Dr. Campen told CNN that the amount of microplastics in the human brain is about equivalent in weight to an entire plastic spoon.^[]

The researchers also found that people who had received a diagnosis of dementia had up to 10 times more plastic in their brains than their peers.

However, researchers said the study did not determine if the higher level of plastic in the brains of people with dementia actually caused dementia symptoms.^[]

Ubiquitous toxins

Andrew West, PhD, co-author of the study and a professor at the Duke Center for Neurodegeneration Research, says the increase in concentration of plastic in the brain over the past 8 years is in proportion to the amount of plastic found in the environment.

“As I understand, similar increases have been observed in environmental samples from food and water supplies. The simplest explanation is that ingestion exposure is increasing proportional to environmental sources,” he tells MDLinx.

Experts say the majority of microplastics in the body are ingested as food. The commercial production of meat, in particular, involves concentrations of plastic in the food chain.

“The way we irrigate fields with plastic-contaminated water, we postulate that the plastics build up there,” Dr. Campen said in the press release.^[] “We feed those crops to our livestock. We take the manure and put it back on the field, so there may be a sort of feed-forward biomagnification.”

While the findings of the study aren’t entirely surprising, they are still concerning.

"The brain is a sacred space in the body and was designed to be protected from exposures."

— Angelle Desiree LaBeaud, MD

“It is disconcerting that microplastics have found their way into our brains, but I am not surprised because nanoplastics can be so tiny,” Angelle Desiree LaBeaud, MD, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at Stanford Medicine who co-founded the university’s interdisciplinary Plastics and Health Working Group, tells MDLinx.

“This is very concerning and unfortunate. We are using more and more plastic in our lives with each passing day, so our exposure risk is growing,” she says.