Please Stop Wearing Plastic Clothes (part one)

You have a spoonful of plastic in your brain.

That’s right. Right now, your brain is made up of about 0.5% plastic, by weight.[i]

You’re not alone if you find this troubling. Unfortunately, plastic has been found in other tissues of human bodies, too, including the heart, liver, kidneys, blood, lungs, placenta, breast milk, arterial plaques… it’s pretty ubiquitous, at this point. But how is it getting there?

Researchers have pinpointed a likely source, and it’s one that has been flying under the radar for decades. While we’ve been worried (and rightly so!) about non-stick pans, plastic food storage containers, and bottled water, all along there has been a subtle source of plastic pollution literally right under our noses.

Your clothing and other textiles are constantly shedding plastic particles into your environment. They shed when you move around. When you walk over your favorite polyester rug. When you complete the weekend laundry. When you sleep under your down-alternative comforter on your down-alternative pillow. They are an insidious source of toxicity that collects in your home and in the food chain.

In this series, we’ll highlight the two main sources of exposure—our food and our air— and talk about what this means for our health. We’ll also dive into some things you can do to protect yourself and your family.

Our Plastic Clothing Pollution

It turns out, we are often eating plastic fibers that shed from our clothes. These fibers, too small to be filtered out by wastewater treatment plants, meander into streams and oceans, making their way into the food chain.

Several studies have demonstrated the prevalence of this phenomenon. A small study in early 2025 sampling 55 hogsucker fish from seven freshwater streams in Appalachia found microplastic particles in 100% of the fish, with the average fish containing 40 particles. The most troubling statistic? 97% of the plastic particles were fibers from clothing. [ii]

Similarly, a 2020 study sampling 72 gizzard shad and 24 largemouth bass from two reservoirs in the Midwest found microplastic particles in 100% of the fish, where “almost all of [the] microplastics were colored fibers.”[iii]

Okay, but both of these studies concern freshwater sources, right? The vast ocean must be different, right? A 2023 review found that 100% of samples across multiple studies had microplastics, with synthetic microfiber concentrations ranging from 52%-100%. Concentration levels remained steady across various sizes, meaning that sardines carry as many particles as tuna, by weight. Further, it didn’t matter if the fish were farm-raised or wild-caught—they all were contaminated with tiny pieces of plastic fiber.[iv]

“it didn’t matter if the fish were farm-raised or wild-caught—all were contaminated.”

Microplastic fibers have been found equally prevalent in oysters and mussels. They have been found in shrimp, crabs and lobsters.[iv]

Land animals, too, are found to have a large concentration of plastic fibers.

For instance, each time you eat your favorite half-pound NY Strip, you’ve consumed an average of 50 microplastic particles, 87% of which were synthetic microfibers from plastic textiles and clothing.[v]

Beyond the food chain, synthetic microfibers are finding their way into the air we breathe. Household dust might be the most dangerous source of exposure to the microscopic plastic fibers shed from clothes and other textiles. We are much more susceptible to the particles lodging in our lungs than the particles moving through our GI tract.

Infants have astronomically higher exposure due to their relatively tiny body sizes and proximity to the plastic carpet that blankets the floors.

Research published this April 2025 showed that the average household has 155 ± 222 microplastics per mg of household dust.[vi] Of these, fibres constituted ~50 % of the identified microplastics in all studied samples. Just last year, a systematic review found that across multiple studies, adults were found to be inhaling an average of 4.19 MPs/kg-BW/day while infants had over 3x the exposure at 15.2 MPs/kg-BW/day.[vii]

Imagine—a 150-pound person inhales 285 tiny pieces of microplastics a day, just in their own home! This figure is staggering, and puts the health of us and our children at significant risk.

I know all of this information may feel overwhelming, but I promise that you have agency in protecting yourself and your family. But first, we need to understand just what we are protecting them from—in short, why does this matter?

To answer this question, we will have two more posts exploring the conundrum of plastic clothes. In Part Two, we will cover the long-term health effects of microplastic exposure. We will touch on hormonal effects, bioaccumulation, most vulnerable populations, and much more. Later, in Part Three, we will dive into practical steps you can take to protect yourself and your family.

Stay tuned!

peer-reviewed citations:

[i] Alexander J. Nihart et al., “Bioaccumulation of Microplastics in Decedent Human Brains,” Nature Medicine 31, no. 4 (2025): 1114–19, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-03453-1.

[ii] Isabella M. Tuzzio et al., “Widespread Microplastic Pollution in Central Appalachian Streams: Implications for Freshwater Ecosystem Sustainability,” Sustainability 17, no. 7 (2025): 7, https://doi.org/10.3390/su17072926.

[iii] Raven Hurt et al., “Microplastic Prevalence in Two Fish Species in Two U.S. Reservoirs,” Limnology and Oceanography Letters 5, no. 1 (2020): 147–53, https://doi.org/10.1002/lol2.10140.

[iv] Serena Santonicola et al., “Impact of Fibrous Microplastic Pollution on Commercial Seafood and Consumer Health: A Review,” Animals : An Open Access Journal from MDPI 13, no. 11 (2023): 1736, https://doi.org/10.3390/ani13111736.

[v] Farkhondeh Bahrani et al., “Occurrence of Microplastics in Edible Tissues of Livestock (Cow and Sheep),” Environmental Science and Pollution Research International 31, no. 14 (2024): 22145–57, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-024-32424-9.

[vi] Hassan Khalid Ageel et al., “Microplastics in Settled Indoor Dust: Implications for Human Exposure,” Emerging Contaminants 11, no. 3 (2025): 100506, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emcon.2025.100506.

[vii] Tiffany Eberhard et al., “Systematic Review of Microplastics and Nanoplastics in Indoor and Outdoor Air: Identifying a Framework and Data Needs for Quantifying Human Inhalation Exposures,” Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology 34, no. 2 (2024): 185–96, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41370-023-00634-x.