Your Brain On... Microplastics

Headlines warned us about microplastics in our brains. A chemist says the study may have been measuring brain fat instead.

In 2025, a study claiming microplastics accumulate in human brain tissue dominated our feeds. We covered it. Then Dr. Michelle Wong, a chemical scientist and science communicator, flagged a problem with the methodology.

So we went to the primary literature, read the critique, and brought in one of the first scientists to publicly challenge the findings: Dr. Oliver Jones, Professor of Analytical Chemistry at RMIT University in Melbourne.

In this episode, we unpack what went wrong with the measurement method, what it means for the broader microplastics conversation, and why being willing to say "I was wrong" is so vital for good science.

In this episode:

How pyrolysis GC-MS works and why it can confuse plastic breakdown products with brain fat
Why potassium hydroxide digestion creates soap, which also mimics plastic signatures
The contamination problem: body bags, centrifuge tubes, plastic storage containers, and lab air
Why 7 grams of microplastic per brain is more than what researchers find in raw sewage
The Marfella study in The New England Journal of Medicine: microplastics in arterial plaques and why it also lacked blank controls
How microplastics could enter the body: skin absorption, ingestion, and inhalation
Why PM2.5 monitoring already captures the most relevant airborne microplastic exposure
What the WHO, FDA, and European Food Safety Authority have concluded about microplastic harm
What better microplastics research would actually look like
Why the real lesson is about how we evaluate headlines, not just microplastics

Dr. Oliver Jones is Professor of Analytical Chemistry and Associate Dean of Biosciences and Food Technology at RMIT University in Melbourne. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (FRACI), he holds degrees from Imperial College London and Cambridge. He is one of only 118 scientists worldwide named to the IUPAC Periodic Table of Outstanding Younger Chemists. His research focuses on developing methods to measure environmental contaminants, including microplastics, and he was among the first scientists to publicly challenge the methodology of the viral "microplastics in the brain" study.

Follow Dr. Jones: @dr_oli_jones
RMIT faculty page: rmit.edu.au/oliver-jones

Dr. Michelle Wong (Lab Muffin Beauty Science) first flagged the methodological concerns to us.

Hosted by Drs. Ayesha & Dean Sherzai
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