The new study has scientists concerned that microplastics may be contributing to reproductive health issues.
Whether it's our bloodstream, brain, or lungs, microscopic fragments of plastic seem to turn up every time scientists scour a new corner of the human body.published this month finds microplastics can build up in the testicles of humans and dogs — raising more questions about the potential health impacts of these particles.to microplastics can impact sperm quality and male fertility, but scientists are still in the early stages of translating this work to human health.
Dogs can function as"sentinel" animals for disease and harmful chemical exposure because they're so embedded in the human environment, plus canineInstead of trying to count each microplastic particle, the researchers were able to quantify the total amount of plastic by dissolving all the biological tissue and separating out the solids., or PE, made up a large portion of that.
"In the history of looking at chemical or environmental health issues, at the beginning you see these indicators of health harms and then those that have some type of evidence behind them just tend to grow," says Woodruff,"I anticipate we're just going to see more health harms from these microplastics."
"We're just at the tip of the iceberg," says Campen, who has used this same technique to quantify the levels of microplastics in other tissues and organs. "It's probably one more piece of the puzzle of things that are contributing to declines in male fertility over the years as these environmental exposures keep accumulating," she says,"We don't know the clinical ramifications of that yet.""Having something unnatural like that in the testes is not particularly good news for good reproductive health," says Lea.
"I think there have to be a lot of caveats saying this is really the beginning," says Swan, a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai,"It's suggestive, it's important, and it's preliminary."
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