Neha Pathak, MD, FACP, DipABLM: Welcome to the WebMD Health Discovered Podcast. I'm Dr. Neha Pathak, WebMD's Chief Physician Editor for Health and Lifestyle Medicine. You're probably familiar with the term microplastics — those tiny, often invisible plastic particles permeating our food, water, and environment. But have you considered the impact that microplastics have on women's health, fertility, and what, if anything, we can do about it?

In this episode, we're tackling the important questions: How are microplastics affecting our bodies during pregnancy? Could they be contributing to a rise in rates of high blood pressure disorders, infertility, and preterm birth?

And with the chemicals that are added to plastics — like bisphenols, phthalates, parabens, and forever chemicals — what can we realistically do to limit our exposure? Today, we'll take a step-by-step approach to the science behind how plastic in our daily lives — food packaging, water bottles, clothing, and more — affects hormonal signaling, gut health, and pregnancy.

We'll also address some of the biggest myths. Myths like: “Well, we still don't really know if plastic causes human harm,” or, “Plastic is just everywhere, and there's nothing we can do to limit our exposure.” Whether you're curious about microplastics' role in chronic health conditions or looking for strategies to protect yourself and your family, you'll come away from this episode with vital insights and ideas for a healthier future.

First, let me introduce my guest, Dr. Jane Van Dis. Dr. Jane Van Dis is a board-certified OB-GYN and founding member of PSAP — Physician and Scientists Network Addressing Plastic and Health — and founder of OBGYNs for a Sustainable Future. She specializes in the care of women in inpatient obstetrics and gynecology. Welcome to the WebMD Health Discovered Podcast, Dr. Van Dis.

Jane Van Dis, MD: Thank you so much for having me today.

Pathak: So before we jump into our conversation around microplastics — and specifically their impact on women's health — I'd love to ask you about your own personal health discovery around microplastics, plastics, and how they impact our health. What made you become so interested in this field?

Van Dis: I actually came to this research in part because I was seeing so many of my patients on labor and delivery being diagnosed with increased rates of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. So, as a little background, I'm an OB-GYN. I work solely in the inpatient setting.

So, 95% of my practice is on labor and delivery — taking care of patients in triage, antepartum admissions, postpartum admissions — and then about 5% are GYN emergencies through the emergency department. So I see a lot of patients who are coming into the hospital, and what I noticed was that they had chronic hypertension in pregnancy. They had gestational hypertension in pregnancy. They had preeclampsia and eclampsia. There are times where my entire service — eight patients, for instance — all have some derivative of hypertensive disorder of pregnancy. And, you know, 30% of preeclampsia happens in the postpartum period. So we see a lot of postpartum patients who go home with their baby and then have to come back and get admitted for preeclampsia because of this condition.

And so, I've been an OB-GYN for 22 years, and I was looking around and I said, “My goodness, what is causing this?” None of the typical factors that are accounted for in the literature that I've seen would point in a direction as to why so many people were being diagnosed with this.

The more research I did, I began to understand that a lot of chemicals are surrounding us and affecting our vascular system. All of the blood vessels that line our body are usually the precursor — in addition, obviously, to the placenta — for these hypertensive disorders. And so, the more I looked, the more I found that increased exposure to plastics — and the endocrine-disrupting petrochemicals within the plastics — was likely a very significant contributor that actually wasn’t being talked about very much.

Pathak: I’d love to just take a step back and define microplastics.

Van Dis: Plastics, of course, comprise so many things that surround us. For instance, if you were to walk into your closet, probably somewhere between 60% and 70% of your clothing is made of polyester or nylon or some type of plastic. And every time you wash your clothing, tiny amounts of microplastics are being shed and they make their way into the waterway.

If you go to work in an office building or a hospital like us, you’ll see plastic water bottles everywhere, right? They’re handed out like candy, as it were. And then another huge source of microplastics is actually coming off of our tires. Our tires might have some rubber — like what we think of when we think of rubber coming from a rubber tree — but in fact, the tires are actually comprised mostly of microplastics. And every time the wheel spins, as it were, on the asphalt, tiny shards of microplastics are being shed from those tires. And then they are also making their way into the waterways.

And then, of course, we’ve got all of the food contact plastic. You can’t go into a grocery store these days and not see things like cucumbers, apples, grapes — basically, all of our food is wrapped in plastic. And so those plastics are actually making their way into our bodies.

So, the exposures are many, and it’s actually maybe more helpful to think about what isn’t shedding plastics than what is.

Pathak: So help us understand a little bit about some of these differences. What makes up plastic when we think about it — the microplastics, but also the chemical additives in plastics?

Van Dis: Yeah, so this is really a great fork in the road, if you will. Scientists are obviously still in their nascent period of understanding the health effects of plastics. Having said that, what researchers found recently was they took patients who had atherosclerotic plaques — so, little plaques in their carotid artery right here in the neck — and what they did was they looked at the plaques under the microscope. What they found was that patients who had increased rates of stroke and heart attack and even death actually had more microplastics in their plaque.

So the question that you might ask is: Do the tiny plastic particles in that plaque contribute to the stroke, heart attack, and death?

Similarly, studies have shown that there are microplastic particles in blood clots. Blood clots can cause deep vein thrombosis. They can lead to pulmonary embolism. They can have catastrophic health effects as well. And what researchers find there, too, is that those thrombi — those blood clots — that have more microplastics in them actually are more deleterious for the patients.

But you might be suspect of that, and you might say, “Well, Dr. Van Dis, is it the actual plastic particles or is it the chemicals within the particles?” And the answer is: we don’t know. But what we do know is that it does seem that the more microplastic particles there are in a tissue or in a disease process, the greater the health impact.

And what we do have, though, is actually over 7,000 studies looking at the health effects of some of the petrochemicals in plastics. The big ones that we oftentimes talk about are:

• Phenols — which include BPA, BPS, BPF
• Phthalates — put into plastic to make them more flexible, soft, and pliable
• PFAS — the forever chemicals (5% of U.S. soil is now contaminated with PFAS)
• Parabens — found in many cosmetics and hair care products

The problem with a lot of these petrochemicals is that when scientists go and look to do a control, they actually can't — because every body, every person, has these chemicals within them. It’s almost as if you have to do more observational studies as opposed to randomized controlled trials like what we're used to, in part because there isn't a person out there who doesn’t have these chemicals in them. And I know that might be upsetting for a lot of people to think about — it's upsetting to me.

Pathak: Tell us a little bit about where we're seeing them in the environment around us.

Van Dis: What scientists have discovered is that actually these microplastic chemicals — which have been manufactured since the 1940s — are found everywhere on Earth. As high as Mount Everest and as low as the depths of the Mariana Trench. So there sort of isn’t a habitat in the world — not Antarctica, not the Arctic Circle — that doesn’t have these plastics now as part of their ecosystem.

I’ve seen it written that every raindrop now has PFAS in it. So, there really isn’t a place on Earth that is untouched by these plastics.

And it’s interesting because researchers are looking at the fact that in certain places where there is enough heat — let’s say in geothermal spots or other hot places in the Earth — the plastics actually become part of the sediment, part of the rock, as it were, part of the geology. And so this will be the Plasticine, right? If there are people around 500 years from now, they will have a museum — and they’ll be able to look back at our time when, in addition to basalt and all the other types of geographic formations, we have layers of plastic.

Pathak: So we'll be able to find dinosaur fossils, and then at a certain point, we'll see human-caused plastic in our sediment.
Van Dis: That's right.
Pathak: So we recognize that now plastics, microplastics, are everywhere in the global environment. How do they get into our bodies?
Van Dis: So, actually three ways. As you might imagine, we inhale microplastics—plastics that are coming off of the tires. While some of them run in rivulets off of the road, some also get aerosolized. And so we actually inhale quite a few microplastics. And then we drink microplastics.

There are microplastics in our water system. Remember, every time you wash your clothes—unless you solely have cotton, linen, and wool—microplastics from your clothing make their way into the waterway. And then, obviously, that water makes its way back into our bodies. There currently are not municipal water systems that are filtering out microplastics.

Interestingly enough, France is the first country, in January of this year, 2025, to require all new washing machines to have a microplastic filter on them. That’s brilliant. We would hope that maybe that would catch on, because actually, our fabrics are a huge source of microplastics in the environment.

And then the last way some of these microplastics are entering our body is across our skin. A lot of these plastics and petrochemicals are contained in products that we put on our skin—products like sunscreen and lotion and foundation and makeup. All these products have plastics in them, and then they also have these petrochemicals in them, and so they get absorbed across our skin.
Pathak: Can you talk a little bit about where they've been found? So are they collecting in different organs? Can you talk a little bit about the evidence for where they're collecting?
Van Dis: Some of the first studies coming out in 2021 showed they were in lung tissue. And then, in that same year, researchers found them in meconium, which is the very first poop. It’s not considered poop 'cause it's sterile, but the very first poop that comes out of an infant right at birth.

And so that was found positive for microplastics. That obviously led researchers to assume that these microplastics were crossing the placenta—obviously, if the baby right after being born was positive for microplastics. And then: sputum, blood, breast milk, liver, urine, veins, testes, heart tissue. In 2023, kidneys.

And then a huge study came out in 2024—which was actually the study that led my TikTok on microplastics and health to go viral—showing that there's a little over a teaspoon’s worth of plastic in the brain. People were abhorred by the thought that there was plastic in their brain.

And then, just a couple of weeks ago, we found plastic in both bone cartilage and bone marrow. So pretty much everywhere researchers look, they're finding microplastics in the human body.
Pathak: You know, it's so interesting because when we think about our body, we think about very sensitive areas where the body has worked really hard to create a barrier—because those are really important organs, potentially, that we want to protect. So the blood-brain barrier, when we talk about our bone marrow, where we're creating new cells for our body—these are systems that, over evolution, we've worked really hard to protect from environmental exposures.

So that is really kind of stunning—to learn about how easily microplastics can infiltrate even these defense systems that we've set up.
Van Dis: What I will say is that the definition of a microplastic particle is anything less than five millimeters, but the size of the microplastic particle can obviously go down into the nanometer size. That is not something that's visible to the naked eye.

There was a study that came out last year showing that the average one-liter water bottle had over 250,000 nanoparticles in it. Another study I read said that every time you twist the cap off of a plastic water bottle, about 50,000 microplastic particles fall into the water—just with that motion, that abrasion of the plastic on plastic as you open that water bottle.

So I think, yes, microplastics include those that we can see with the naked eye, but the majority of these plastics are not visible to the naked eye.
Pathak: The fact that meconium—that very first poop—has microplastics, and we have strong evidence, that you've laid out, that microplastics are getting through the placenta into the developing baby... Can you talk a little bit about the health risks that you started us off with in our conversation—from the hypertension in the mother to other downstream health impacts that are linked to microplastic exposure?
Van Dis: One thing I want listeners to understand is that every researcher—whose interview, webinar, or podcast I’ve listened to—everyone points to this period in utero, while we are developing as humans, as the most important period of time in terms of exposure to environmental toxicants.

What happens in utero actually has a more profound effect on that child's life than what happens after birth. And certainly in childhood—we know that children are more susceptible to environmental toxicants, for instance, than compared to an adult.

But part of that is that babies in utero do not have even as great of a blood-brain barrier as we do as adults. So, these microplastics are crossing our blood-brain barriers—but in utero, that blood-brain barrier is even more porous, right? And so more of these chemicals have a more profound impact on a growing fetus than they do on a child or an adult.

Also, their organ systems are developing rapidly, their cells are dividing rapidly, so they are therefore more vulnerable to the damage that these plastics and the chemicals contained within are causing while they’re in utero.

And then also, they do not have fully developed systems to detoxify their bodies. So the liver isn’t fully formed—obviously, their immune system isn’t fully formed—so again, they can't rid themselves of these environmental exposures as well as a child or adult can.

Lastly, what I’ll say is that they have a greater lifetime burden of exposure to these chemicals. So in some ways, you know, a baby born today is born more polluted than a baby born 40 years ago—in part because there’s just that much more plastic in the environment now than there was 40 years ago.

This means that this generation is at increased risk of all the things we commonly talk about: childhood obesity, childhood diabetes, cardiovascular disease.

If you look into the science, you can see the effects these chemicals are having on our pregnancies—and yet we’re not talking about it. We’re not focusing on it, and in fact, we’re talking and focusing on the wrong things.
Pathak: Can you talk a little bit about the health impacts—really on women’s health in general—from infertility to other women’s health concerns that people might not recognize have had some sort of scientific link with microplastic or plastic exposure?
Van Dis: We have heard increasing discussion about the infertility rate in the U.S. And again, having been an OB-GYN for 22 years, I’ve seen the number of couples struggling with infertility rise. I would say when I started OB-GYN, it was maybe one in eight couples, and now it’s one in five who struggle with infertility.

I’m sure your viewers know, but just to reiterate: when it comes to infertility in a couple, about a third of the infertility can be attributed to a woman’s infertility, about a third to the male infertility, and then about a third of the time it’s unknown why the couple is having infertility.

What we do know is that these chemicals—phthalates, parabens, and phenols—absolutely have an effect on women’s health. They increase the risk for endometriosis, which now one in nine to one in ten women suffer from.

They increase the incidence of polycystic ovarian syndrome, which, as you might understand, is an insulin resistance—it is associated with a lot of endocrine components. So it would be natural, therefore, to think that these endocrine-disrupting chemicals are affecting a disease like polycystic ovarian syndrome.

And then also, even fibroids, which can impact fertility as well. So all three of those—which combined probably have an incidence rate of close to one in two to one in three women in the U.S.—are being affected by phthalates, parabens, and phenols, these chemicals within our plastic.

And then we’ve also seen a lot of research coming out looking at the effects of phthalates on sperm count.

So you’ll see a lot of people currently in our government talking about birth rates and how the birth rates are falling. Some of that is due to people’s desire not to have children, but some of it is due to struggles with infertility. And again, I would love to see that conversation turn the camera back and focus on these petrochemicals—rather than blaming individuals for their infertility.

Pathak: I’d love to follow up on one more study—when we’re talking about preterm births and microplastics found in the placenta. Can you talk a little bit about that piece?

Van Dis: Yeah, so this was some research published in January of 2024 by Dr. Ree from NYU, and I actually interviewed him for my webinar series, on our channel, OBGYNs for a Sustainable Future. He looked at over 5,000 mother–fetal dyads and measured their urine concentration of phthalate metabolites.

So, when we are exposed to a phthalate inside of a plastic, our body breaks down that phthalate into component parts, and those metabolites—those component parts—are then measured in the urine. And what he found in that study was that about 10% of all preterm births, he surmised, could be potentially due to elevated exposures to phthalates.

So, in the urine of those women who had phthalate exposure, there was a significantly increased risk for a preterm birth. And then on top of that study, there was a study that was just published in January of this year—and I’m hopefully gonna have this author on my channel as well. What these researchers did was they looked at 175 placentas and measured the amount of microplastics and phthalates in the placenta.

Now, what the researchers thought they would find was that the longer a gestation was—the longer a pregnancy was—the greater the increase of microplastics in the placenta. And you think about that over time—obviously, there’s increased deposition of those microplastics in the placenta. But in fact, what researchers found was the opposite.

What they found was that in those women who delivered preterm, there were more microplastics in their placenta than in those who went to term. And more microplastics means more phthalate exposure. So this was fascinating, and it really added to the literature. But I think what we're gathering from both of these really important studies is that the exposure is having clinical effects on our pregnancies, including our preterm birth rate.

Pathak: Really, really important. So, in this segment, we're gonna spend a little time debunking misconceptions—myths that folks might have around microplastics and health. So, first is that what you hear often is, “Well, studies show that there may be links. We still don't have enough information to really make this connection yet. We are gonna need decades more of research.” But at this point, we really don't have the evidence to say that this exposure is causing these downstream health impacts.

Van Dis: Thank you for this question, because I actually lecture at universities and departments of OB/GYN across the country. And sometimes the first question that I get after I provide my lecture is, “Dr. Van Dis, aren't you confusing correlation with causation?” And it's meant to be a little bit of a stab, right?

But the fact of the matter is, we as physician–scientists—as physicians—we're trained on this idea of a randomized control trial as being the pinnacle of research achievement. It's only when we have that pure kind of data that we can, with 100% certainty, state that something is true. And obviously, we are trained on that type of data as regards the pharmaceutical industry and how new medicines and new therapies are brought to bear in our fields of medicine.

There is a natural skepticism regarding observational studies. But as your listeners might apprehend, if they’re putting two and two together, we will never have a randomized control trial of a human who does not have these exposures versus a human who does. So we are left with observational studies—looking at the penetration, or how much of a plastic chemical a person has in their body, whether it's urine, whether it's blood, whether it's on a pathological specimen—and then drawing inferences.

And obviously, we need studies that have large enough cohorts that we can say that there is statistical significance—you know, that are well-powered. But having said that, the observational studies that have been done so far are all pointing in the same direction.

I actually published, with some colleagues here at the University of Rochester, a review study looking at EDCs—endocrine-disrupting chemicals—and pregnancy. And, you know, we started out with over 1,700 studies; I believe a little over a hundred made it into our review. And many, like me, have done these types of reviews and meta-analyses. There’s even one umbrella review, which is a meta-analysis of a meta-analysis, showing the health effects of these chemicals on our bodies.

So I personally have sufficient evidence to act. And I hope that my colleagues who look at the studies as well feel that there is sufficient evidence to act. Because the fact of the matter is, none of the regulatory bodies—not the EPA, not the FDA, and not the USDA—they are not currently protecting us and our health from these chemicals.

So, you know, having me on your show is a possibility that more people become educated. Not only that—they can maybe take some steps to protect their own health and the health of their family, but so that they can become aware. And maybe, if enough of us do raise our voices, maybe we can get some regulation in place to help protect us.

I don't think we need to wait decades in order for us to, number one, protect ourselves in our homes, and number two, to raise the alarm.

Pathak: Myth number two: If we're still trying to figure out whether it's the chemicals in the plastic or the plastic itself, why don't we just have substitutions for some of these dangerous chemicals and continue going about our lives? Because plastic does fill such an important role in our society.

Van Dis: Yeah. I'm not going to be here to tell you that. Obviously, when you wrap something in plastic, it weighs less, and when you ship it across the Pacific, that it doesn't save emissions because the packaging is so lightweight. We have a lot of benefits from that plastic.

But having said that, to your point about substitutions—unfortunately, what we've seen from industry is that they have no problem substituting chemicals that they know are just as harmful as the chemical that they've replaced. And the perfect example of that is bisphenol A. I had my twins in 2008, and at the time I looked for anything that said "BPA-free."

And I genuinely thought, as an educated professional mom-to-be, that I was going to be protecting myself and my unborn babies—and my babies after they were born—from bisphenol A. And the fact is that the manufacturers substituted bisphenol S or bisphenol F (as in Frank) for bisphenol A.

So the chemical was the same, and in some cases, the substitution is more harmful than the chemical it replaced. It was very disingenuous. And I think still, large sections of the public don't know that "BPA-free" doesn't mean that it's phenol-free. It's a tactic that industry has used to try and trick the public.

And I think it's very sinister. Again, no one's regulating these companies when they make substitutions like that.

Pathak: And then the last myth—and I hope this will get us into what we can do about this—is just that, you know, plastic and these chemicals are everywhere and there's just nothing we can do about it.

Van Dis: Yeah, and that's very, very common—to feel overwhelmed. And I oftentimes feel like the audiences, after they listen to one of my lectures, they feel overwhelmed as well. Hashtag normal. But after you feel those feelings, there are many things that you can do to protect your own health and the health of your family.

So, you know, one of the things that we talked about was the amount of plastics in the water. You can get a filter, and it could be an expensive reverse osmosis filter for the whole house, but it doesn't have to be. I don't have one of those. I simply have a filter that sits in my refrigerator that I refill every few days. And in this way, these filters are good enough that they are filtering out not only the microplastics but also the PFAS. There are filters out there that can filter out these deleterious chemicals.

So, not drinking water out of plastic bottles is one of the number one ways that you can decrease your exposure and your family's exposure. But that's going to include, unfortunately, not drinking beverages out of aluminum cans either, because those aluminum cans are also all lined with plastic.

So it really means decreasing your beverage exposure to plastics. Some other ways that you can decrease exposure are limiting your intake of certain foods.

The more processed a food is, the more likely it has absorbed plastic particles. Some of the foods with the most plastic in them are going to be seafood—specifically shrimp—in part because the waters where the shrimp are harvested are oftentimes more polluted with plastic. And then the processing of the shrimp exposes them to more plastic.

Those are going to be some of the foods that have the highest amounts of plastic. The other is to eat a more plant-based diet. Studies have shown that plastic is in a battle, as it were, with your gut microbiome. We know that our gut microbiome is a place where our immune system functions in order to rid ourselves of dangerous things in our food, right?

And so the more whole-food, plant-based items that you eat, the better your gut microbiome is at eliminating the plastic exposure that you do have. We see a lot of plastic exposure coming through meats—so, pork and beef and chicken. Those people who have a more whole-food, plant-based diet actually have fewer microplastics, and their gut microbiome is better able to remove plastics from the gut.

So those would be some of the best ways that I know. The other that I'll mention is vacuuming and using a wet mop frequently. There are a lot of microplastic particles in dust, and so if you can, keeping the dust down in your house is going to decrease your inhalation exposure to plastics.

Pathak: And you've also mentioned sort of three big ways that you can increase the transfer of microplastics into whatever we're eating—so, heat, the acidity of the food, and the fat content. Can you talk a little bit about those exposures?

Van Dis: Yeah, one really fascinating study came out in October of 2022, and researchers here looked at fast food and the concentration of phthalates in the fast food. And the researchers said it was interesting because actually the EPA—or the FDA, I forget which one—had said that the Happy Meal toys could not have phthalates added to them because a lot of young children and babies would put Happy Meal toys in their mouths, and therefore the babies were being exposed to the phthalates.

So they removed the phthalates from the toys. But what the researchers found was that actually there were a lot of phthalates in the actual food at these fast food restaurants. Some of it is due to the processing of the food before it makes its way to the restaurant, and some of it was probably due to the fact that restaurant workers have to wear polyvinyl gloves, and that the handling of the hot food with the gloves resulted in shedding of the polyvinyl chloride molecules and the chemicals contained within into the food—just from the handling.

So the best way to decrease your exposure is to make your food at home. You know how it's made. You know whether or not you're using a plastic cutting board—that’s a no-no. Don’t use plastic cutting boards. But you can control your exposure much, much better if you're cooking at home.

Pathak: Well, we appreciate you so much for educating us today.

Van Dis: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Pathak: Some of my key takeaways from this episode are that microplastics have been detected everywhere in nature, and studies show that they're in our bodies too—in our lungs, blood, and even the first stool that a baby has after it's born.

Women's health is uniquely impacted by microplastics. The chemical additives in plastic—like bisphenols, phthalates, PFAS (what we also call forever chemicals)—have been associated with rising rates of conditions like preeclampsia, preterm birth, endometriosis, PCOS, and even fertility challenges.

Because we know that microplastics have been found in the placenta, and we also know that the fetal blood-brain barrier is more permeable during fetal development, prenatal exposures to microplastics and chemical additives may have an impact not only on maternal health but also on a child's health for years to come.

In order to make an impact, we've got to pay attention to our daily habits. Heating or storing food in plastic, drinking from plastic bottles or plastic-lined cans, and wearing or washing synthetic clothing can all increase microplastic exposure.

We've also got to know that individual and system-level solutions exist. Filtering drinking water, choosing glass or stainless steel over plastic, swapping plastic cutting boards for wood, reducing our fast fashion purchases, or advocating for stricter environmental regulations can all help lower microplastic pollution and protect our overall health.

To find out more information about Dr. Jane Van Dis, make sure to check out our show notes. Thank you so much for listening. Please take a moment to follow, rate, and review this podcast on your favorite listening platform.

If you'd like to send me an email about topics you are interested in or questions for future guests, please send me a note at [email protected]. This is Dr. Neha Pathak for the WebMD Health Discovered podcast.