Plastic in Mom’s Blood Can Reach the Baby
Identification of micro-/nanoplastics in human placental blood using comprehensive multidimensional pyrolysis - gas chromatography x ion mobility mass spectrometry.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Scientists found tiny plastic pieces in the blood of mothers' placentas — the organ that feeds babies during pregnancy.
No biological mechanisms were identified in this study. This may be an epidemiological, observational, or survey-based study that reports associations rather than proposing causal biological pathways.
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A snapshot of a population at a single point in time. Can identify correlations and prevalence, but cannot determine the direction of cause and effect.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Scientists found tiny plastic pieces in the blood of mothers' placentas — the organ that feeds babies during pregnancy.
No biological mechanisms were identified in this study. This may be an epidemiological, observational, or survey-based study that reports associations rather than proposing causal biological pathways.
Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses
Max 100Randomized Controlled Trials
Max 90Cohort Studies
Max 72Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional Studies
Max 44Case Reports & Case Series
Max 30Expert Opinion & Narrative Reviews
Max 528 / 44
Evidence Score
A snapshot of a population at a single point in time. Can identify correlations and prevalence, but cannot determine the direction of cause and effect.
Publication
Authors
Bissonnette JR, Harvey NE, Rowsell ML, Kiefte S, Houthuijs KJ, Béen FM, Lamoree MH, Cahill LS, Jobst KJ
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Claims (6)
Scientists use a technique called pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (PY-GC-MS) to identify traces of plastic chemicals in human tissues by heating the samples and analyzing the resulting chemical fragments.
Tiny plastic particles have been found in the blood of human placentas, with the most common types being polystyrene, polyethylene, and polypropylene, indicating that these pollutants can pass from the mother’s bloodstream into the placenta.
Ion mobility separation improves the accuracy of detecting polyethylene in placental blood by filtering out interfering substances that can cause false positives, increasing measurement precision by up to 233% compared to methods without this step.
Scientists have determined the lowest amount of micro- and nanoplastics that can be reliably measured in blood from the human placenta, with detection limits varying between 0.15 and 0.60 micrograms per milliliter based on the type of plastic. This provides a reference point for future laboratory tests.
When scientists extract plastic particles from placental blood samples, they recover about 90% of polystyrene, 93% of polyethylene, and 53% of polypropylene, showing that different types of plastic are recovered at different rates.