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Urine Diagnostics as a Scalable Platform for Assessing Microplastics and Nanoplastics as Environmental Exposures
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Urine is proposed as a scalable, non-invasive matrix for monitoring systemic microplastic and nanoplastic exposure, with early evidence of MNPs detectable in human urine and optical-computational methods offering high-throughput potential. Establishing reliable urinary biomonitoring would enable longitudinal population studies that are essential for understanding cumulative plastic body burden and its health consequences.
Microplastics and nanoplastics (MNPs) are ubiquitous environmental contaminants detected in multiple human tissues, yet scalable, non-invasive methods for assessing systemic exposure remain limited. Urine offers a promising diagnostic matrix due to its non-invasive collection, repeatability, and ability to reflect renal filtration of circulating particulates. This perspective reviews the advantages of urine-based monitoring, summarizes early evidence of MNPs in human urine, highlights limitations of current detection methods, and discusses the need for scalable, contamination-controlled platforms. Optical and computational approaches may enable high-throughput analysis, supporting longitudinal studies and population-level environmental health surveillance. Keywords: microplastics, nanoplastics, urine diagnostics, environmental exposure, biomonitoring, scalable detection
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Urine Diagnostics as a Scalable Platform for Assessing Microplastics and Nanoplastics as Environmental Exposures
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Urine offers a promising non-invasive matrix for monitoring systemic microplastic and nanoplastic exposure, as the kidneys filter circulating particles that can then be detected and quantified. Developing scalable, contamination-controlled urine-based diagnostics could enable large-scale population surveillance of human MNP burden without requiring invasive tissue sampling.
Preliminary Report: Scalable Detection of Microplastics and Nanoplastics in Human Urine
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A non-destructive optical imaging workflow successfully detected both micro- and nanoplastic signals in spiked human urine, showing reproducible differences in spatial heterogeneity and aggregation behavior at varying concentrations. This scalable, non-invasive detection method could enable routine biomonitoring of human plastic exposure through urine sampling.
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Researchers propose a technology-agnostic standardization framework for measuring microplastics and nanoplastics in human urine, defining shared principles around reproducibility, contamination control, and scalability to enable population-level longitudinal monitoring beyond the small, cross-sectional cohorts that currently dominate the literature.
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