The Explore series

Where microplastics turn up

Four illustrated walks: through a house, a supermarket, a body and the world outside. Each one stops at the everyday objects researchers have measured. Every stop is one object, one figure and the study behind it.

Illustration of the route the series follows: an apartment cut open at the left, a street with a storm drain, a supermarket, a wastewater works, a field with plastic mulch, a river under a stone bridge, and the sea under a rain cloud at the right.
Illustration of living room: the rug, the sofa and the curtains, the floor, where children sit, the open window, the air purifier
Illustration of kitchen: the cutting board, the nonstick pan, the kettle, the tea bag, leftovers in the microwave, the sponge, the water bottle
Illustration of bathroom: the toothpaste, the scrub and the glitter, contact lenses, wet wipes, the washer and dryer nook

One evening at home

What the house sheds

Three rooms, one evening, and the published research on where household microplastics come from.

  1. Living room

    1 to 60 fibres per cubic metre of indoor air, against 0.3 to 1.5 outdoors

  2. Kitchen

    7.4 to 50.7 g of polyethylene shed per person per year

  3. Bathroom

    Some, not all toothpastes tested contained microplastic, depending on the market

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Illustration of the front of the store: the wall of wrapped produce, the bag you tear off the roll, the bottled water shelf, the same bottle, counted again, the fizzy drinks fridge
Illustration of the counters: the board behind the deli counter, the fish counter, the milk fridge, the cup at the coffee bar, the hot food counter
Illustration of the dry aisles and the freezer: the rice, the salt, the sugar, the tin of sardines, the tea bags, the freezer case

One weekly shop

What the aisles hand you

A supermarket trip, aisle by aisle, and what the packaging around the food has been measured to shed into it.

  1. The front of the store

    223,000 particles per gram, the highest median count in the fruit samples

  2. The counters

    0.014 to 2.6 particles per gram of chicken and fish bought over the counter

  3. The dry aisles and the freezer

    3.7 mg of plastic per 100 gram serve of unwashed store-bought rice

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Illustration of the way in: the breathing zone, the nose and the swallow, the mouth, the hands, the plate and the glass, the skin
Illustration of the passage: the colon wall, the stool sample, the infant stool sample, the bloodstream, the liver
Illustration of where they have been found: the lung, the placenta, breast milk, the testis, the frontal cortex, carotid plaque

What has actually been measured

Where the particles have been found

The tissues where published studies report finding microplastics, what those counts say at their real sample sizes, and where the evidence stops.

  1. The way in

    1.7 to 16.2 particles per cubic metre of indoor air at breathing height

  2. The passage

    28.1 particles per gram of colon tissue, averaged across 11 surgical specimens

  3. Where they have been found

    13 of 20 lung tissue samples taken at autopsy contained polymer

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Illustration of the street: the tyres, the air at the kerb, the rooftop above the street, the sky over the city, the storm drain
Illustration of the field and the river: the treatment works, the sludge spreader, the mulch film, the floodplain soil, the river, the thousand smaller rivers
Illustration of the sea and the sky: the surface of the gyre, the sea floor, the salt pan, the fish counter, the mussel rope, the snow line, the spray off the wave

Downstream of the drain

Where it travels next

The route a synthetic fibre takes once it leaves the house, from the wastewater plant to rain falling on a national park.

  1. The street

    0.81 kg of tyre wear shed per person per year, global average

  2. The field and the river

    65 million particles leaving one wastewater plant every day

  3. The sea and the sky

    5.25 trillion plastic particles afloat at the ocean surface, weighing 268,940 tonnes

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