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The Most Disturbing Places We’ve Found Microplastics So Far

From human testicles to clouds, microplastics have infiltrated seemingly everything.

Scientists first found microplastics, those tiny pieces of plastic smaller than 5 millimeters, on British beaches in 2004. In the 20 years since, the world has watched on in horror as microplastics began turning up in virtually every nook and cranny on the planet. Today, we’ve got far-from-complete list that gives you an idea of just how bad things have gotten.

There’s still much we don’t know about what microplastics are doing to ecosystems and our bodies, but recent studies suggest they can cause behavioral changes in mice, heart problems in humans, and perhaps even human infertility. One study found that humans eat at least 50,000 plastic particles a year. As Gizmodo has explained before, it’s a waste of time to try to extract microplastics from our environment if we continue producing plastic at the same levels we always have.

So where, exactly, are we finding microplastics? The list below includes some of the most concerning locations, either because of the implications for our health or because they reveal just how omnipresent the contamination is.

Human testicles

Dog testicles

Antarctica

Human blood

Beer

Ocean seafloor

Arctic ice and snow

Clouds

Mount Everest peak

Mariana Trench

Wind

Table salt

Human breast milk

Archaeological soil deposits

Sugar

Apples

The top of France’s Pyrenees mountains

All bottled water

Human adult feces

Human baby feces

Soil

Clams

Seals

Whales

Sea turtles

Honeybees

Oysters

Salps

Eurythenes plasticus

Black bears

Deer

Otters

Salmon

Human hearts

Human kidneys

Human livers

Human brain

Human lungs

Human intestines

Human placentas (all of them)

Uninhabited Pacific islands

Lake Michigan

Lake Ontario

Lake Superior

Lake Huron

Lake Erie

Water on plant leaves

The Grand Canyon

Joshua Tree National Park

This list will be periodically updated as new research detects microplastics in more places.

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