Say the word “ubiquitous” repeatedly.

Each time, you’ll make a U sound and then press the lips together to breathe out a B sound. Which quickly gets cut off by a KW consonant cluster that gives way to an oh-so whispery, de-stressed last syllable.

Compared to its synonyms like “ever-present” or “everywhere,” enunciating “ubiquitous” isn’t easy. That said, it’s hard not to like the sound of that word.

Except, that is, when you hear it spoken in reference to something likely to be unhealthy for your body.

Like microplastics, extremely small pieces of plastic debris — so small they’re measured in nanometers, billionths of meters. They result from the use and breakdown of the more than 300 million metric tons of plastics produced in the world yearly, 60 percent of which gets used to package foods and beverages.

As a result, you inhale and ingest them. Past studies have shown this and that they are indeed ubiquitous.

One published in October 2019 by Annals of Internal Medicine, for example, analyzed stool samples from eight volunteers and found 20 bits of microplastics for every 10 grams of feces. One published in June 2019 by Environmental Science Technology estimates that every year Americans breath in about 30,000 plastic particles, chow down on another 50,000 or so, and drink in up to 40,000 more if they regularly drink water from plastic bottles.

The use of plastics has increased twentyfold since the mid-sixties, so it’s no surprise that other studies have found microplastics throughout the body, including the liver, kidneys, men’s testes, and women’s placenta.

As well as both sexes’ arteries, specifically clogged arteries. Arteries clogged enough that they cause atherosclerosis and require a carotid endarterectomy, a surgical procedure to remove plaque buildup from the carotid arteries — which are the main blood vessels supplying blood to the brain.

A study published last March in the New England Journal of Medicine explains researchers from the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitella in Italy recruited 304 people who needed such surgery years ago. After the surgery, they analyzed the plaque extracted and found measurable amounts of polyethylene, a plastic commonly used to make plastic bags and food and drink packaging, 60 percent of the time.

With the passage of time and in the words of Yu-Ming Ni, a doctor not involved in the study but asked about it in a Medical News Today article, came a second “terrifying” revelation, one “quite scary to think about.” During the next three years, those patients whose plaque contained microplastics were 4.5 times more likely to suffer a heart attack, stroke, or die from any cause.

While it must be stressed that confounding variables may be at work here, any study finding microplastics in the body creates concern, particularly in this next case. When the amount of it found and the place where it’s detected is called in the words of Andrew West, one of the doctors involved, “almost unbelievable.”

In the study performed by University of New Mexico researchers and published this month in Nature Medicine, the amount of microplastics found in one specific part of human cadavers averaged seven grams, the same weight as a plastic spoon. The specific spot: a region above and behind the eyes, the frontal cortex.

Part of the brain.

But there’s more that’s “almost unbelievable,” and it’s best explained in the UNM press release about the study written by Michael Haederle. When the amount of microplastics in the older brain tissue samples were compared to those from 2024, the researchers found an increase of it of over 50 percent over the last eight years.

Moreover, the presser notes, the brain tissue from the corpses who had been diagnosed with dementia had up to 10 times as much microplastics in their brains in comparison to the cognitively okay. While Haederle indicates it can’t be inferred that microplastics cause or contribute to dementia based on this finding alone, one of the study’s co-authors, Matthew Campen, PhD, Distinguished & Regents’ Professor, UNM College of Pharmacy, summarizes the situation with this colorful commentary.

“I have yet to encounter a single human being who says, ‘There’s a bunch of plastic in my brain and I’m totally cool with that.’”

To help keep your cool, Campen advises limiting the amount of meat you eat. Commercial meat production relies heavily on plastics. Tracey Woodruff, UC San Francisco Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences PhD, MPH, suggests you limit meat ingestion for another reason: because many plastics “hang out in fatty food.”

In an article written by Laura López González for the University of California San Francisco website, Woodruff also recommends other ways to reduce your exposure to microplastics. Buy organic foods as often as possible, refrain from using plastic containers in the microwave, and don’t buy water in plastic containers.