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Research Digests
The Atlas grows in bursts, not on a schedule. When a large group of papers comes in, we read it and write up what stood out.
Different organs, one failing part of the cell
Human placental tissue and two studies of the kidney converge on mitochondrial damage, work on insulin producing cells finds a separate immune route with a matching signal in people exposed at work, and a review names the gap none of it has closed.
Smaller particles, in more of us, than thirty-three years ago
A pair of autopsy archives from one hospital gives the field its first real before and after, alongside new work on what crosses into a pregnancy and what that does not yet prove.
What the body does with the plastic it can't break down
Several of the strongest new studies describe a body that files microplastics away in the very cells meant to clear them, and the opening question of what that storage costs.
The particles we have not been counting
The findings that stood out, and why the one that matters most is that our instruments have probably been undercounting the smallest particles all along.
The brain is not as shielded as we thought
Micro and nanoplastics turning up in nearly every brain sample tested, new attention to the air we breathe, and the slow work of cleanup.
The waste is outrunning every fix for it
A large group of papers about solutions: degradation, recycling, and bioplastics. And one heavily cited study finding that even the most ambitious commitments do not keep up.
When the question turned from the ocean to us
For years this was a marine science. The most cited papers in the founding corpus, and the 2020 study that made the human body something the field had to examine.