From his desk in Seattle, Brad Younggren, MD, poured over the research in disbelief. One paper, three papers, four papers, all saying something no one could have fathomed two and a half decades ago when he was training to be a doctor: Human bodies are inundated with plastic.

Credit cards’ worth in the body, spoonfuls in the brain, the headlines said. Microplastics in the liver, lungs, marrow, muscles, testicles, penises, placentas. Since that morning at his desk, Youngren’s been looking for a way to remove them.

How high microplastic and nanoplastic levels are in human tissue is up for debate, as is the harm they cause. Which means there’s plenty of “won’t know ‘til you try” going on in research circles.

Younggren, a former US Army doctor, is also the CEO of Circulate Health, which offers therapeutic plasma exchange (TPE) through a network of 35 longevity and functional medicine clinics across the country. According to Circulate’s website, the therapy removes and replaces the plasma layer of the bloodstream, which is a catch-all for inflammatory molecules and toxins. Microplastics have, of course, been found in human blood.

In a new study, Younggren and his team showed that plasma exchange can reduce microplastics circulating in the bloodstream. In the worst cases, TPE reduced microplastic concentration by more than half. It’s the first study to show successful removal of microplastics from the human body.

The big unanswered question: Does it help anything?

But First, the Research

The study looked at 174 TPE procedures done on 114 patients, most of whom were getting TPE at functional medicine clinics for longevity benefits. The intent was twofold: to determine if plastics can be removed from whole blood by TPE and, in so doing, find out if microplastics and nanoplastics separate into the plasma layer.

Patients’ blood microplastic concentrations were measured immediately before and after TPE using a microplastic detection product called PlasticTox.

“We have good evidence just from that alone that we’re removing them from the body,” Youngren said. “There’s nothing else happening in the human at the time other than what we’re doing [with TPE].”

For those patients with the highest microplastic burden, those that had ≥ 20/100, TPE significantly reduced circulating microplastics. For those with slightly lower measurements, 10-19/100 uL, TPE showed no significant change, suggesting that microplastics were being added and removed at similar rates. And for the majority of patients with low concentrations measuring ≤ 9/100 uL before TPE, the procedure caused a significant increase (P < .001) in circulating plastics.

So it appears during these procedures a certain amount was leaving while a certain amount was entering.

One possible culprit, “we obviously have to heat the blood before it goes back into the patient,” Younggren said. And the blood is stored in a single-use plastic bag, which are well-established to leach microplastics when heated. A 2023 food science study reported that some single-use food containers could release as many as 4.22 million microplastic and 2.11 billion nanoplastic particles from only one square centimeter of plastic area over just 3 minutes of microwave heating.

Critics have focused on the fact that TPE caused contamination for some patients, Younggren said. But he argues that the study’s primary finding — that microplastics can be removed from the bloodstream — still stands.

Others agree. “It is an intriguing and useful proof-of-concept study,” said Raffaele Marfella, MD, PhD, professor at the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Caserta, Italy) whose The New England Journal of Medicine 2024 study demonstrated that microplastics in the carotid artery was associated with increased risk for myocardial infarction, stroke, and death.

Matt Campen, PhD, professor at University of New Mexico, and director of the New Mexico Center for Metals in Biology and Medicine, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and a Circulate Health advisor whose previous research showed nanoplastics accumulating in the human brain, said the same. “The main takeaway is a very clear proof of concept. This works.” 

So Many Questions

A few years ago, microplastics were fringe science with very little research showing anything definitive beyond the presence itself. Now we’ve reached the point where researchers are experimenting with methods to remove them from the body.

The catch: It’s unclear whether lower levels translate to any real health outcome.

“At present, we do not know whether removing particles from the bloodstream has any meaningful effect on microplastics already deposited in tissues,” Marfella said (he was not involved with this study). “Nor does it show that this approach improves clinical outcomes.”

Without a stronger understanding of how microplastics and nanoplastics are deposited into the tissues and interplay with human health, it’s impossible to know if removing them from the blood does any good.

For one, what does a single measurement of circulating microplastics represent? “Blood may be only a transient compartment,” Marfella said. Microplastics and nanoplastics may redistribute between blood and tissues, in which case blood measurements offer limited insight, and deposits in the tissue — which are much harder to measure — give a clearer picture of plastic burden.

If microplastics and nanoplastics do move between blood and tissue, Younggren said there’s hope of leveraging that dynamic relationship to relieve the organs. It’s possible that removing microplastics from the blood could cause a sort of gradient. To regain equilibrium, tissues might then spill some of their microplastics back into the blood. This would follow the pattern of other conditions treated with TPE, Younggren said, and it would mean that consecutive treatments could reduce the body’s total microplastic load.

“If we lower the amount in the blood, will that allow for more to get out of the brain? We need to find that out,” Campen said.

And the second major question in the wake of this study: How long does the reduction last? Do patients sustain lower levels of plastics after TPE, or are our lives and food supply so saturated with microplastics that the levels rebound in a short window?

The authors attempted to test patients a third time, 30 days after treatment, but too many were lost to follow-up. Longer timepoints will need to be a priority of further study, the experts agreed.

How to Get Closer to Real Answers

Future work needs to take a deeper analytical approach: Raman spectroscopy, laser directed infrared spectography, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, electron microscopy, and more, Marfella said. PlasticTox was useful for showing a downward trend, an affordable way to establish proof of concept. But the assay doesn’t measure the smaller nanoplastics, which are likely more biologically relevant because they can cross barriers and membranes.

Circulate’s research emerges with impeccable timing. In April 2026, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health launched a $144 million microplastics-focused research campaign called STOMP— Systematic Targeting of Microplastics — to build solutions exactly like this one. The project seeks to draw together scientists from an array of disciplines to build tools that better measure, characterize, and remove the microplastics and nanoplastics in the human body.

Phase 2 of the project intends to deploy microplastic detection and treatment solutions at scale.

“It’s a laudable objective, you know, but it’s also odd,” Campen said. In the past, when environmental toxicants threatened the human body, the approach wasn’t to apply chemicals and therapies to remove them. The approach was to stop exposure. When faced with concerning rates of lead toxicity, people weren’t prescribed more chelants. Manufacturers were ordered to stop putting lead in gasoline and paint.

Microplastics can be removed from the human body in high-burden cases. Maybe, after more trials, that proves to have some benefit. “But why is that the first thing our government decides is a priority, rather than addressing the broad environmental [problem],” Campen said. “Let’s stop ingesting them.”

Marfella declared having no relevant conflicts. Younggren reported being co-founder and CEO of Circulate Health. Campen is an advisor to Circulate Health. Disclosure information for study authors is available in the original study publication.