Human exposure to PM10 microplastics in indoor air

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Overview

Paper Summary

Conflicts of Interest

Identified Weaknesses

Rating Explanation

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Paper Summary

Paperzilla title

Breathing in More Microplastics Than We Thought: Indoor Air Surprisingly Full of Tiny Plastic Particles

This study found much higher concentrations of inhalable microplastics (<10 μm) inside homes and cars than previously estimated, due to methodological advancements in measuring these tiny particles. They also highlighted the potential impact of this higher exposure, as these small particles can penetrate deeper into our lungs. Inhalation health impacts are extrapolated but require further detailed studies.

Possible Conflicts of Interest

The residential and car environments studied are all privately owned by the authors of this study, which does suggest some selection bias, although this is very common in studies involving sampling from private locations.

Identified Weaknesses

Limited sample size

While the sample size is not extremely low for an advanced analytical chemistry study such as this, the sample size of 16 environments does limit the generalizability of the findings, particularly to diverse building materials, ventilation conditions and human activities (occupational exposure) within those environments. The extrapolation of nanoplastics concentrations from larger plastic particle data creates considerable uncertainty. The extrapolation of health impacts, especially due to chemical stress caused by additives and absorbed pollutants, would require toxicokinetic and epidemiological studies, which are not yet available.

Uncertain nanoplastic extrapolation

The authors extrapolate measured nanoplastic concentration using a power law from larger microplastics. Such extrapolations over several orders of magnitude creates uncertainty regarding the actual presence of nanoplastics.

Extrapolation of health impacts

The inhalation health impacts are extrapolated from concentrations but would require detailed studies on plastic particle-lung interactions, and the toxicokinetics of chemical additives and pollutants absorbed to the plastic particles.

Rating Explanation

This study provides important new data on indoor microplastic concentrations, but is limited by a modest sample size and the inherent uncertainty of the power law and health impact extrapolation.

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