The uptake and excretion of a single oral dose of 1 µm [14C]-labelled polystyrene microplastic particles in healthy volunteers using a microdose approach

Microplastics — tiny plastic particles found in food, water, and air — may be entering our bodies, but we still don’t fully understand how they behave once inside. This study will help us learn how the body absorbs, handles, and excretes microplastics — essential information for protecting public health. This study is part of a national initiative funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw) and carried out by Wageningen University in collaboration with TNO.

Background
Micro- and nanoplastics —tiny plastic particles smaller than 5 mm—are increasingly being found in our food, drinking water, and the air we breathe. Although research has made progress in recent years, we still don’t know enough about how these particles behave inside the human body.

To help fill the most urgent gaps in our knowledge, the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw) funded several breakthrough studies. These were later combined into one large research project called the Microplastics and Human Health consortium (MOMENTUM).

The main goal of this project is to understand the possible health risks of microplastics for people. One important part of this is doing a first risk assessment, based mostly on lab studies where human cells are exposed to microplastics. But to understand what these lab results mean for people, we need to compare the amounts used in the lab to the amounts people are actually exposed to in real life. This requires special models—called toxicokinetic models—that can help estimate how much plastic gets into the body and what happens to it.

To check if those models are accurate, we need real data from human studies. At the moment, no such data exists. Some studies have found plastic particles in human blood or tissue, but we don’t know how or how much people were exposed.

Description
This study investigates how small plastic particles are absorbed, processed, and excreted by the human body. To do this, healthy volunteers will be given a one-time, very small safe oral dose (a microdose) of microplastics that have been labelled with a tiny amount of radioactive carbon (14C). This labelling allows researchers to trace the particles in the body, even at extremely low levels.
Samples of blood, urine, and stool will be collected and analyzed using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS), a highly sensitive technique that can detect very small amounts of 14C in human biological samples. This makes it possible to follow the path of the microplastics in the human body.

The data from this study will help improve laboratory models and computer simulations that are currently used to estimate how microplastics affect human health. These improved models will support better risk assessments and help scientists and policymakers understand the potential impacts of everyday exposure to microplastics

This study is part of a national initiative funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw) and carried out by Wageningen University in collaboration with TNO.