A series of peer-reviewed papers released this year is reshaping scientific understanding of how far plastic pollution is penetrating the human body and how large the health risks may be. The most comprehensive work, published in Nature Medicine, used pyrolysis gas chromatography–mass spectrometry and electron microscopy to examine post-mortem samples from 2016 and 2024. Researchers found micro- and nanoplastics in every brain they tested, with concentrations in 2024 specimens rising roughly 50 % over eight years to a median 4,917 µg of plastic per gram of tissue. About three-quarters of the particles were polyethylene. Separately, a New England Journal of Medicine study detected polyethylene in 58.4 % of carotid artery plaques from patients undergoing surgery and tracked the cohort for an average 33.7 months. The presence of plastic—measured at 21.7 ± 24.5 µg per milligram of plaque—was associated with a higher incidence of subsequent cardiovascular events, adding to concerns that ingestion or inhalation of fragments may translate into systemic disease. Evidence of everyday exposure is also mounting. Researchers at Columbia University and Rutgers University report that commonly sold bottled water contains 110,000 to 400,000 nanoplastic fragments per litre—around 100 times more than previous counts and suggesting the container itself is a main source. At the same time, a technical review in ScienceDirect challenges popular claims that people ingest the equivalent of a credit card of plastic each week. It concludes that the 0.1–5 g/week figure originated from flawed calculations and overstates intake by several orders of magnitude, underscoring the need for standardised measurement methods. While the World Health Organization and other agencies continue to call for curbing plastic pollution as a precaution, researchers behind the new papers say clearer exposure data and toxicology thresholds are urgently required to determine whether the particles found in brains, arteries and consumer products constitute a direct threat to human health.