Plasticenta: First evidence of microplastics in human placenta.
By A. Ragusa, A. Svelato, C. Santacroce, Piera Catalano, V. Notarstefano, O. Carnevali, F. Papa, M. Rongioletti, F. Baiocco, Simonetta Draghi and 4 more. Environment International, 2021
2,595 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Microplastics are particles smaller than five millimeters deriving from the degradation of plastic objects present in the environment. Microplastics can move from the environment to living organisms, including mammals. In this study, six human placentas, collected from consenting women with physiological pregnancies, were analyzed by Raman Microspectroscopy to evaluate the presence of microplastics. In total, 12 microplastic fragments (ranging from 5 to 10 μm in size), with spheric or irregular shape were found in 4 placentas (5 in the fetal side, 4 in the maternal side and 3 in the chorioamniotic membranes); all microplastics particles were characterized in terms of morphology and chemical composition. All of them were pigmented; three were identified as stained polypropylene a thermoplastic polymer, while for the other nine it was possible to identify only the pigments, which were all used for man-made coatings, paints, adhesives, plasters, finger paints, polymers and cosmetics and personal care products.
Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/94126c3aaa2877850b8630b5e8a87b182a8a80c4
How researchers see this paper
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- G. Gioacchini
- A. Ragusa
- V. Notarstefano
- A. Svelato
- Alessia Belloni
- O. Carnevali
- C. Blondeel
- E. Zucchelli
Citations in the corpus
- Bioaccumulation of microplastics in decedent human brains (2025, neutral): “So far, visual microscopic spectroscopy methods have identified particulates in organs, such as the lungs, intestine 7 and placenta 8 .”
- Raman Microspectroscopy Detection and Characterisation of Microplastics in Human Breastmilk (2022, methodology): “We recently found MPs in the human placenta, which represents the interface between the foetus and the mother exposed to the external environment [21], results that were also confirmed by Braun et al.”