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First study on the toxicokinetic approach of MNPs in an environmentally exposed human population, through their evaluation in blood and urine samples by Pyr-GC-MS and multivariate analysis.
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Scientists tested 98 people's blood and urine and found tiny plastic particles (microplastics and nanoplastics) in nearly everyone—showing up in 98% of urine samples and 89% of blood samples. This confirms that plastic exposure is essentially universal in daily life, and the study suggests urine could become a simple, non-invasive way for doctors and researchers to track how much plastic we're absorbing from our environment.
Exposure to MNPs represents an emerging risk for human health. This study provides a comprehensive profile of ten polymers in blood and urine from 98 volunteers in an environmentally exposed population. MNPs were morphometrically characterized prior to quantification by Pyr-GC-Orbitrap-MS. Data were processed through independent bivariate and multivariate analyses to determine polymer compartmental partitioning in both matrices. All participants tested positive for at least one polymer with a higher overall detection rate in urine (97.8%) than in blood (88.5%) and a mean total blood:urine concentration ratio of 0.50. The multivariate analyses suggest that partitioning profile in blood and urine is multidimensional, exhibiting distinct compartmental trends. In the bloodstream, the HCA of polymer loadings from the PCA reached an average silhouette width of 0.54, consistent with a distribution pattern probably governed by chemical structure and particle surface properties. In contrast, the average silhouette width of the HCA in the urinary matrix was 0.39, suggesting a greater overlap among hierarchical groupings, expected for this highly fluctuating biological fluid. Our findings in urine samples could represent the result of multiple factors such as physical boundaries and particle morphological features, furthermore the specific renal handling related to their chemical structure. The bootstrap analyses suggested some highly stable aggrupation in urine, supporting seven distinct polymer pairs assigned within the same cluster with high-support values up to 96% (PP-PE). These findings suggest that urine is a non-invasive, structured, stable, and sensitive matrix for assessing environmental human exposure to MNPs.
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