Microplastics have been found in fish, whales, and now even humans. It was only a matter of time until this happened. To be more precise these tiny particles were found in the stool of eight people who were part of a study. This is not much of a shock considering that microplastics have been identified in drinking water, table salt, beer, and seafood. This is the first time it has been recorded in humans though, making it quite a significant discovery. However, the researchers don’t actually know where the fragments originated from and they aren’t yet aware of the potential risks associated with them.

There are a lot of sources the small plastic fibers could come from. Food packaging can shed tiny fibers; clothing, plastic-based items, and even household carpeting can also shed fiber. Which begs the question, where did the fiber actually come from?

There are also questions regarding their effect on humans’ health. Once they are inside the human body and have broken down into nanofibers, can they work their way into the bloodstream? Or lymphatic system? Or even reach the liver? As of right now, it reminds unknown.

Philipp Schwabl, was the one that conducted this experiment. He is a gastroenterologist at the Medical University of Vienna and is planning to recreate the study in a larger group. For the original experiment, he studied three males and five females all between the ages of 33 to 65, from several different parts of Europe and Japan. The study subjects or participants were asked to keep a food diary for a week and then provide a stool sample. The plastic fiber results of every sample were positive, they each included some type of plastic.

These were the results of the participant’s food diary:  two of them chewed gum daily, six ate seafood, they all consumed food that was wrapped in plastic at some point, and they all drank about 25 ounces of water from bottles made of PET.

Schwabl said that the study was too small to be able to draw conclusions about individual factors that could have been potential sources of the plastics. Schwabl does not want to rush any conclusion or results since he didn’t directly study the harm that the plastics can cause yet. But, he did say: “We showed there are microplastics in human stool. Up to now, people believed it, but now we know it. That’s important.”