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As a health reporter covering chronic diseases for The New York Times, I often get ideas for articles from new medical research. And as someone who grew up near the ocean, I have long been aware of the vast amounts of plastic we as a society use and throw away — and the detrimental effects that such waste can have on the environment.

So in February, when I came across a study about the buildup of microplastics inside of human brains and other tissue, I was immediately curious.

In the study, researchers at the University of New Mexico described a novel way to identify and measure the amount of microplastics inside human bodies. They also showed that over time, as the amount of plastic in the environment has increased, so too has the level of microplastics in our brains.

The researchers tested human brain samples from 2024 and found nearly 5,000 micrograms of plastic per gram of brain tissue. Though there’s some uncertainty in the estimate, if you extrapolate that’s about seven grams of plastic per brain — a little more than the amount in a sturdy plastic spoon.

Though environmental scientists have been studying microplastics for decades, the biomedical community only started to study their effects on humans in the last few years. The researchers in New Mexico are at the leading edge of that effort.

In March, I traveled to Albuquerque to meet the researchers and watch them work. The lab, and their offices, are in the basement of the university’s College of Pharmacy, where portraits of researchers and poster presentations from conferences line the walls.

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