YIKES! Microplastics found in lungs.

I am time limited, but I wanted to flag this one for you all because … oof. Those “harmless” face masks are doing more than polluting the environment, theyre polluting people’s lungs.

A new study that will be featured in the July edition of the Science of the Total Environment journal has used spectroscopy to find microplastics in people’s lungs for the first time. And not in an inconsequential amount.

I won’t make the argument that microplastics could not get into anyone’s lungs besides face masks… but real talk: We know this is from face masks. Inhaling microplastics from a plastic bag when unpacking from the grocery store is a lot different than wearing a plastic bag on your face all day.

An earlier article from the same journal.

Researchers can easily test this hypothesis, too. There are still people to this day that have never worn a face mask, places that never mandated them, and so on. But the mask bandits would never risk such a test; the results would conflict too deeply with one of their holy symbols.