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Methods for identifying microplastics in human biofluids: scoping review
Summary
Scientists know tiny plastic particles called microplastics can end up in our blood, urine, and other body fluids, but this review reveals a big problem: researchers are using wildly different methods to detect and measure them, making it hard to compare results across studies or trust the numbers we're seeing. This matters because without consistent, reliable testing methods, we can't accurately answer basic questions like how much plastic is actually in our bodies or whether it's harming our health—so standardizing these techniques is a critical next step before we can draw firm conclusions.
The massive use of plastics has generated significant environmental and biological impacts, to the point that its residues will possibly mark the fossil record. At the end of its life cycle, plastic disintegrates into increasingly smaller fragments. Upon reaching the micrometric scale (microplastics), these materials can be absorbed by the human body, leading to potential local and systemic damage. Although the scientific community has dedicated continuous efforts to identify and characterize the presence of microplastics in different human tissues and matrices, this research area encounters important methodological challenges. The lack of standardization in analyses hinders the reproducibility of biological and toxicological assays. Given this, this scoping review aims primarily to investigate and map the analytical methods currently available in the literature to identify and characterize microplastics specifically in human biofluids.