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Impact of microplastics on food safety and human health
Original title: Impacto dos microplásticos na segurança alimentar e na saúde humana.
Summary
Tiny plastic particles are turning up in tap water, seafood, table salt, and packaged foods, and this research review pulls together existing studies to show how they get into what we eat. Once inside the body, microplastics may trigger inflammation, cell damage, and hormone disruption, though scientists still don't fully know the long-term consequences. The takeaway: this is a growing health concern worth watching, and it highlights the need for stronger food safety rules and more research—not an immediate reason to panic.
The objective of this study is to analyze the contamination pathways of the food chain by microplastics, assess the risks associated with food safety, and discuss the potential adverse impacts on human health. This is an integrative literature review conducted across the Latin American and Caribbean Literature in Health Sciences (LILACS), Virtual Health Library (VHL), Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), and PubMed databases, covering publications from the last 8 years (2018–2026), in addition to technical reference documents. The results demonstrate that microplastics are widely distributed across different food matrices—such as drinking water, seafood, table salt, and processed foods—and can cause harm through inflammatory processes, oxidative stress, chemical toxicity, and endocrine disruption. It is concluded that contamination by these pollutants represents an emerging and growing risk to public health, requiring stricter regulatory measures, continuous monitoring by health surveillance agencies, and advancements in research regarding long-term effects.