As the global war of attrition against plastic continues to rage on, new (and, frankly, worrying) research from Denmark's Aalborg University has found a devastating side effect of the world's appetite for plastics. And it's not got anything to do with sea life.

Scientists studying 'microplastic' pollution at Aalborg University in Denmark have found that plastic products — re-usable coffee cup people, this includes you — are polluting our lungs, as well as our conscience, through food, drink and air.

Nowhere is safe, it seems. According to University researcher Alvise Vianello, the time we spend indoors is filling our lungs with tiny plastic particles shed by the plastic products in our home.

To find the result, Vianello and his team used a 'breathing thermal mannequin' — a robot, rather depressingly, designed solely to inhale dangerous plastic — to analyse the levels of ingested microplastic content in a typical home. The results weren't ideal, with the mannequin sucking in approximately 11.3 pieces of micro plastic every hour from the apartment.

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At this point, say the research team, it's important to remember that their experiment can't definitively prove that humans are inhaling similar levels of microplastic, but the next step would be to run human trials and assess the plastic content in subjects' lungs.

“This is the first evidence of human exposure to microplastic through breathing indoor air,” explained Jes Vollertsen, one of the study's authors.

Unsurprisingly, microplastic content in human lungs can have considerably damaging effects. Damage to lung tissues — which can lead to cancer, asthma attacks and other problems — is the primary concern, while the particles could also contain toxic chemicals or contaminants that alter bodily functions, including your hormones.

"We now have enough evidence that we should start looking for microplastic inside human airways,” Vollertsen said of the study. "Until then, it’s unclear whether or not we should be worried that we are breathing in plastic.”

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Edward Cooper Ed Cooper is the Deputy Digital Editor at Men’s Health UK, writing and editing about anything you want to know about — from tech to fitness, mental health to style, food and so much more.

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