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Are You Drinking Plastic?

Bottled water contains a startling amount of plastic particles. And they may be harming your health.

March 2026
By Jennifer Barone | Illustration by Jeff Mangiat

As you read, ask yourself: How can pollution in the environment affect the health of communities?

Illustration by Jeff Mangiat

You’ve just finished track practice. Feeling hot and thirsty, you twist open a plastic bottle of water and gulp it down. But beware: That bottle contains more than just a refreshing drink. Recent research has found that every liter of bottled water contains hundreds of thousands of tiny plastic particles too small for you to see with the naked eye.

This finding adds to a growing pile of evidence that plastic particles enter our bodies through food, drinks, and even the air we breathe. Plastics have been found throughout human body systems—in our lungs, our livers, our blood, and even our brains. What effect do these particles have on our health? Scientists still aren’t sure, but they’re working to find out. For example, one recent study found a possible link between plastic particles and heart problems.

But don’t panic—it’s never too late to start reducing the amount of plastic in your life.

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Many microplastics are smaller than a grain of rice. Some can’t be seen without a microscope.

Plastic Everywhere

Companies started mass-producing things out of plastic in the 1950s. Today manufacturers make hundreds of millions of tons of plastic each year (see “How Much Plastic?,” below). The material is used in almost every product you can think of, from packaging to furniture, and from toys to clothing.

Plastic is useful, because it’s durable and inexpensive to produce. The material has benefited public health in many ways. For example, single-use plastic items like syringes and IV bags have helped make medical care more sanitary, reducing the spread of infection. Plastic has also made it easier to safely transport food and water around the globe.

But the same qualities that make plastic useful also make it problematic for the environment. Plastic is so cheap that people throw it away without thinking about it. Many plastic products are made to be thrown out after one use.

Once it’s in the trash, plastic doesn’t biodegrade, or naturally break down, the way materials like wood, paper, and metal do. Instead, it breaks apart into tiny plastic pieces called microplastics. These particles easily pass through water filters in sewers and travel to rivers and streams. There, the plastic bits are absorbed by plants and eaten by animals.

Microplastics also get into our food supply from plastic containers and wrappers. They end up in all kinds of meats, fruits and vegetables, packaged foods, and beverages.

How Much Plastic?

This graph shows annual global plastic production since 1950, when plastics started to become widely available.

SOURCES: OECD, OUR WORLD IN DATA

High-Tech Tally

In 2024, a team of scientists used new technology to quantify the microplastics in samples from three brands of bottled water. The team found an average of 240,000 plastic particles per liter (a common bottled water size). This was 10 times more than previous estimates! About 90 percent of these particles were nanoplastics, plastics less than one-thousandth of a millimeter across.

The enormous number and the tiny size of the plastics concerned researchers. “We know from other chemicals, like air pollution, that the smaller a particle is, the more likely it is to have toxic effects,” says study author Phoebe Stapleton. She’s a toxicologist, a scientist who studies substances that can affect health, at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Scientists suspect that these super tiny particles may be able to slip through the body’s defenses, like skin and intestinal walls, allowing them to travel deeper into tissues.

Human Health Effects

We don’t know exactly how these bits of plastics affect our health, but recent evidence suggests they may be harmful. In another study released in 2024, researchers looked at microplastics in the human cardiovascular system. The scientists discovered plastics in the blood vessels of 150 of the 257 study participants.

The same study also showed that patients with plastics present had elevated levels of inflammation. And during the three-year study, they were 4.5 times more likely to die, or suffer from a heart attack or stroke, than those without detectable plastics.

“This study has for the first time associated plastic pollution with human health and disease,” says study author and surgeon Raffaele Marfella. If more studies confirm this connection, he says, “the implications for cardiovascular health are staggering. This is a problem we cannot afford to ignore. And the only defense is to reduce plastic pollution.”

Reduce Your Use

In a world that produces record amounts of plastic every year, addressing the issue of plastic pollution may seem overwhelming, but every bit helps.

You probably know that certain plastics can be recycled. This is often a better choice than throwing plastics in the trash, but it doesn’t solve the microplastics problem. In fact, recycling facilities chop or shred plastic before melting it, releasing huge amounts of microplastics into the environment.

That’s why experts say the best choice is to use less plastic (see “Tips to Reduce Your Plastic Use,” below). Marfella hopes the recent data will spark a call to action to confront the problem of plastic pollution. “This alarm message will help people and governments recognize that human health and planetary health are united,” says Marfella.

Tips to Reduce Your Plastic Use

You can take action to cut back on plastic waste and reduce your exposure to micro- and nanoplastics.

FILL ’ER UP

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Fill metal or glass bottles with tap water, which contains less plastic than bottled water. Carbon or ceramic filters purify water without releasing plastic.

SKIP THE PACKAGING

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Whenever possible, choose unwrapped foods or foods packaged in materials other than plastic.

CHOOSE TO REUSE

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Avoid single-use plastics, like plastic bags, straws, and utensils. Opt for reusable items instead.

REFLECTION PROMPT

What can you and your family do to reduce plastic use in your daily life?

Physical Health
Nutrition

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