What's happening?

Laura is eating her lunch. She has a potato salad she made a home, some vegetables she bought from the supermarket and a bottle of water. Yum!

Laura does not know that she is also eating plastic. It comes from the water bottle, the packaging of her roasted vegetables and the box she carried her salad in.

The pieces of plastic that Laura is eating are very small. Some are microplastics: pieces of plastic under five millimetres long. But there are also nanoplastics, which are too small to see. Together, they are known as MNPs.

Scientists already knew that they could enter the body and move around it. Now, they have found out that plastics can also enter the brain. For now, we do not know what eating MNPs might do to humans. But doctors worry they could harm people's hearts, lungs and gutThe tube food passes through when it leaves the stomach. .

Find out more

Scientists say we should try to drink from glass or metal water bottles instead of plastic. They also suggest wearing clothes made out of natural materials like wool or cottonA soft, white substance that grows as part of the cotton plant and can be made into fabric. .

Yes! We cannot escape the tiny pieces of plastic. They are everywhere. It cannot be good for us to have plastic in our bodies.

No! We should not worry about this until we know more. There are lots of things in the world that are bad for us, but we find ways to deal with them.