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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.
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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