As microplastics flood our bodies, can testing and treatment defend us? Following in the footsteps of worried A-listers, Luciana Bellini heads to Harley Street.
In the seemingly never-ending list of things we should be worried about when it comes to our health, microplastics are currently public enemy number one. These miniscule particles have been found everywhere from the top of Mount Everest to inside our brains and breast milk, and it's been reported we could be inhaling as much as 68,000 microplastic particles every day. While researchers are still investigating the effect this has on the human body, early findings have already linked microplastics to inflammation, organ dysfunction, osteoporosis, higher risk of heart attacks and strokes, decreased reproductive health and cancer.
Health Canada has identified microplastics as an emerging concern and is funding research to better understand exposure levels in the Canadian population. The FDA in the United States has similarly acknowledged the presence of microplastics in food but says current evidence does not demonstrate a risk to human health at estimated exposure levels.
Testing options
Unsurprisingly, this has led to a sharp uptick in clinics offering microplastics testing and procedures that promise to rid your blood of toxic particles. Plenty of A-listers have already jumped on the bandwagon, with the likes of Orlando Bloom and Gwyneth Paltrow extolling the benefits of eye-wateringly expensive blood cleansing treatments to help with issues like brain fog and fatigue. But do microplastics actually pose a genuine threat to our health, or is this simply a new way to push the latest lucrative wellness fad?
To find out, I headed to Reborne Longevity, which earlier this year launched a new £250 microplastics test that promises to detect and quantify microplastic particles in your bloodstream. The clinic itself is located in an elegant townhouse just off Harley Street and offers everything from genetic testing and DEXA scans (for measuring bone mineral density) to hyperbaric oxygen therapy. There I was led to a sleek treatment room where the clinician carried out a simple finger-prick test to extract a blood sample, which was then applied to a plastic-free collection card (all the materials used are plastic-free to prevent sample contamination). The whole process took less than 10 minutes.
'A useful piece of the puzzle' When I have my follow-up call with Dr Dorsa Jalaei, the clinic's Preventive Health Coordinator, four weeks after my test, I'm happy to learn my result is OK. "Your screen detected three particles in total, all in the smaller size ranges, which works out at a low calculated concentration," she tells me. "So as a single snapshot, there is nothing to be concerned about." She also says that while she has noticed a steep rise in patients requesting microplastics testing, for the majority of people this sort of test simply isn't necessary.
"We had one patient who had been in Los Angeles during the fires last year and was experiencing symptoms of inflammation," she says. "For her, the test did show an elevated level of microplastics, so it was a useful piece of the puzzle in her diagnostics. But for a healthy person without a specific high exposure event, it adds very little to the picture."
Treatment claims
If the test did find you had a high level of microplastics swirling around in your blood, one of the leading places for treatment is Clarify Clinic. With outposts in Dubai, Johannesburg and Istanbul, they say their Clari procedure can remove between 90 and 99 per cent of microplastics from the bloodstream. The procedure has been endorsed by Orlando Bloom, who tried the £9,750 treatment last year and praised it as a "new way of removing microplastics and toxic chemicals from our bodies".
The treatment itself takes around two hours and works by extracting blood from the arm and using a machine to separate out the plasma from blood cells. That plasma is then filtered through a column designed to trap microplastics and forever chemicals, before being mixed back with the blood cells and pumped back into the patient. Afterwards, some patients report feeling energised and clear-headed, while others feel flu-like symptoms, aches or fatigue.
Clarify's CEO and co-founder Yael Coen says she's noticed a significant rise in people coming into the London clinic over recent months. "Microplastics now come up in our consultations regularly and are noticeably mentioned more frequently than two years ago," she says. "Most people are disturbed to learn where microplastics have already been found, including blood, placental tissue and major organs. While we can't yet say exactly what a high microplastics load means for any given individual over 20 years, I think we can all agree they shouldn't be in us."
The balance of evidence However, experts have suggested there isn't enough evidence around the effect of microplastics on our health to warrant such an invasive procedure, not to mention the fact that much of the microplastics testing available isn't accurate enough. "Single, simple tests are not likely to provide unequivocal proof, but rather tentative or indicative evidence which sits at a lower level of certainty," says Dr Leon Barron, lead of the Emerging Chemical Contaminants team at Imperial College. "In fact, some tests may only be able to tell that a particle is present, not even necessarily that it is a plastic at all. As a result, it is actually very difficult to truly confirm the presence of microplastics in human tissues."
Dr Stephanie Wright, Imperial's microplastics expert, agrees. "Over the next few years, we need this evidence base to grow, underpinned by rigorous methods and robust measurement data, to determine whether there is a threat or not, and what concentrations in blood mean in the context of our health."
One thing everyone agrees on, though, is that reducing your everyday exposure to plastic can only be a good thing. "There are a few simple steps you can take," says Jalaei. "Choose glass or stainless steel for food storage and reheating, avoid heating food in plastic and filter your tap water. These are sensible, low-cost habits that anyone can adopt."