About This Project

Small microplastics (sMPs) are so small that they are airborne, and thus we breathe them. Here, we analyze sMPs in lungs from necropsies of people with different conditions (cystic fibrosis, lung cancer, or emphysema), from adults bur also kids. This will help understand and treat better chronic pulmonary conditions. We will also identify the chemical nature of the sMPs to help identify their sources (textiles, wildfire smoke, or microbeads from cosmetics) to better manage exposure.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Microplastics are all over the news, and are seemingly found "everywhere". including in our brain and reproductive organs. It is usually assumed that these particles are picked up by our body from what we drink and eat. Very little consideration is given to the fact that we also breathe small microplastics (sMPs) which is the motivation of this project. We have already measured sMPs in the air and quantified them in different environments around the world. It is thus clear that we inhale them. Now the question is: how much sMPs do we keep in our lungs (and do not exhale). Ultimately, do sMPs trigger chronic inflammation that can lead to lung diseases? This project will answer these questions working with lung experts from around the country (mainly Lunquist University-UCLA and Yale).

What is the significance of this project?

This project is one of its kind because access to lung samples from necropsis are difficult to obtain. We have access to a data base of several hundreds lungs collected and preserved for analysis, going back 20 yrs. This opens up the possibility of a historical perspective to our study as well. But let's start with one time point and different conditions, in order to assess if sMPs could in any way correlate with an lungs conditions. This will help with designing better larger studies to integrate samples from different parts of the world, from rural versus city communities. Ultimately, conditions like asthma or other allergies (associated with the respiratory system) might found some causality with sMPs, and not only with pollen and dust. Because sMPs are deemed to increase over time (there is no sign in decreasing the plastic production) this data will become critical for public health purposes.

What are the goals of the project?

This project has six goals that are (1) to quantify the concentrations of sMPs in lungs samples as a baseline. Another goal is to (2) assess the difference in sMPs concentrations across pulmonary conditions (cystic fibrosis, lung cancer, emphysema due to heavy smoking); Right now, our colleagues have identified about N=15 samples of lungs from different patients in each category. This analysis will be done in triplicates and will complement the goal (3) that is to assess the difference in sMPs concentrations in young versus older individuals (to answer whether sMPs are increasingly accumulated over our lifetime). For this, we have about N=50 samples of lungs from different ages, including all the way to unborn babies. Ultimately, we will also (4) identify the types of plastics making the sMPs, using infrared spectral imaging (see lab notes), and (5) provide images of the sMPs (using electron microscopy) so that we can (6) illustrate a peer-reviewed publication!