How are microplastics affecting us? Researchers aim to answer the question
It's believed lifestyle choices might not be solely to blame for rates of liver disease
The impacts of microplastics on the livers of animals and humans is now being investigated by experts at the University of Plymouth.
It's to see what impact it's having on global levels of liver disease - which now kills one in 25 people.
Published in the journal Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology, the article has been produced by researchers from the University of Plymouth’s newly-established Centre of Environmental Hepatology.
The article’s lead author is Professor Shilpa Chokshi, Professor of Experimental Hepatology, who has been driving research to develop therapeutics for chronic liver disease for more than two decades.
Professor Chokshi said: “Liver disease is rising globally and is now responsible for 1 in 25 deaths worldwide.
"While established risk factors such as obesity and harmful alcohol use remain central, they do not fully explain the scale or pace of this increase.
"This has led us to consider additional environmental factors, including micro- and nanoplastics, which may interact with existing disease processes and amplify liver injury. There is already strong evidence that plastics can accumulate and cause harm in the livers of animals, raising an important question – why should humans be any different?”
In the review, the researchers have highlighted critical methodological bottlenecks, key knowledge gaps and unmet research priorities, as well as a number of technical challenges that are presently hindering the search for further evidence of plastic-induced liver injury.
They have also provided a detailed assessment of the priority research required to fully quantify the effects of microplastics and nanoplastics on the liver, and the emphasised the importance of health and environmental experts working in tandem to address that.
Professor Chokshi added: “What this article shows is that we now have a growing body of evidence that plastics can accumulate in human tissues, and have been implicated in a range of medical conditions.
"From my perspective, having spent over two decades developing therapeutics for liver disease, the liver acts as the body’s gatekeeper – processing and detoxifying what we are exposed to. In an increasingly plastic-laden world, where plastics are closely associated with our food, water and air, these exposures may not only reach the liver but also interact with existing disease processes and amplify harm. If this is the case, it is something we need to investigate in much greater detail.”
Professor Richard Thompson OBE FRS, Professor of Marine Biology at the University of Plymouth, is another of the article’s co-authors. He is Head of the International Marine Litter Research Unit at the University of Plymouth and a co-coordinator of the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, and has spent the past three decades examining the sources and effects of microplastics and calling for a global consensus to prevent their future production.
“This is further evidence that plastic pollution is, without question, a global environmental and health challenge,” he said. “While some uncertainties about the absolute level of harm to the human liver remain, the fact that plastics are present at all – and the wider evidence of harm caused by plastic pollution – necessitates urgent action. The solutions unquestionably lie in ensuring the plastic products we make bring essential benefit to society and that those essential plastic products are safer – for example, in terms of their chemical composition – and far more sustainable, shedding fewer micro- and nanoparticles than is currently the case.”