Did the Plastics Industry Know About Microplastics in the Body?

What did the LA Times investigation find?

Reporter Susanne Rust, working with Crooked Ideas, assembled decades-old internal documents from chemical and plastics companies. The Times reports they show industry scientists and executives were aware of, and concerned about, plastic particles moving beyond the gut and collecting in organs, for at least half a century. Most of the papers sit in two public archives: the UCSF Industry Documents Library and ToxicDocs, a Columbia University and City University of New York project. According to the Times, they surfaced in earlier lawsuits over tobacco, asbestos and industrial chemicals.

We could not load the Times page directly, so this account relies on a syndicated copy credited to the Times and on summaries by Gizmodo and Yale Environment 360, all dated October 26 to 28, 2026. We also opened one archived memo ourselves and the two Volkheimer papers that the documents refer to.

Who was Gerhard Volkheimer, and what is persorption?

Volkheimer was a gastroenterologist at Berlin’s Charité hospital who, from the 1950s, studied what he called persorption: solid particles slipping between the cells of the gut lining and into the body. In a 1974 review in Environmental Health Perspectives, he describes micrometer-sized particles being pressed into the intestinal wall as food moves along, then carried by lymph vessels and veins into the circulation, where they stay for a considerable time.

In May 1974 he presented his PVC work at a New York Academy of Sciences meeting on vinyl chloride, published the next year as “Hematogenous dissemination of ingested polyvinyl chloride particles”. As summarized by E360 and Gizmodo, he fed PVC particles to dogs, pigs and other animals and found them in the liver, brain, lungs and other tissues within about two hours. He also gave people potato starch, which he used as a stand-in because it behaves similarly, and found starch grains later in blood and breast milk. The word “microplastics” did not exist yet; the Times notes it was coined in 2004.

The meeting had been called after cases of a rare liver cancer, angiosarcoma, among workers at a B.F. Goodrich PVC plant in Kentucky. That cancer was linked to vinyl chloride gas, the raw chemical. Volkheimer’s point was different: finished PVC, as solid particles, could get into the body too.

What do the industry memos say?

Here is what the reporting attributes to specific documents. Wording is paraphrased unless quoted, and each line is the Times’ account unless we say we opened the document.

The memo we opened is short and matter-of-fact: a numbered list of talks from the meeting, with Volkheimer’s summarized in a sentence. That fits the Times’ description of awareness rather than a plan of action. On its own, it doesn’t tell you what anyone decided to do with the information.

Did the plastics industry know microplastics were harmful?

That is the question the documents can’t fully answer, and it’s where coverage tends to blur. There are two separate claims:

Tracey Woodruff, a Stanford epidemiologist and former EPA scientist who reviewed the documents for the Times, told the paper they show companies knew and chose to stay silent while particles built up in people. She compared it to what makers of tobacco, asbestos and greenhouse gases knew. Matthew Campen of the University of New Mexico, whose lab measures plastics in human tissue, told the Times the same uptake should apply to polyethylene, polypropylene and PET, and that his lab has seen broadly parallel findings.

What does the plastics industry say?

Craig Davis, senior director of plastics chemistry at the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s largest US trade group, rejected the silence framing. “Scientific debate over what the evidence shows is not silence,” he told the Times. He argued Volkheimer’s animal work did not show real-world harm and used doses far above what people encounter, while acknowledging the human starch experiments used comparable doses. Davis said the ACC supports a congressional bill on microplastics research and funds the Microplastics Advanced Research and Innovation Initiative, set up in 2022 by the International Council of Chemical Associations. The Times says the Plastics Industry Association did not respond.

That defense has a real point inside it. In 1974 nobody had methods to find plastic particles in human blood. Volkheimer’s doses were large, and his particles were not the mix people now swallow. The counterpoint, which the Times and Woodruff make, is that the research kept getting cited internally, appeared in a 1975 EPA assessment and two WHO reports, and still went largely unfollowed for about 40 years.

Is there a lawsuit over these documents?

Not one the reporting describes. The documents became public because of older cases about other products, and the Times uses them as a historical record. Everything about intent here is an interpretation of internal papers, contested by the industry. Until a court examines these specific claims, treat them as allegations, not established facts. If that changes, we’ll update this page from the court record rather than press coverage.

What does science say about plastic in the body now?

Modern work started around 2018, when researchers in Vienna found microplastics in human stool. Since then, plastic has been reported in blood, placentas, arteries and brains. The findings are real but uneven, and the methods are still being argued over.

• Blood. Leslie and colleagues found measurable plastic in 17 of 22 healthy donors in 2022, averaging 1.6 µg per mL in positive samples. Our blood study explainer walks through it.
• Arteries. In a 2024 NEJM study, 150 of 257 patients had polyethylene in plaque removed from neck arteries, and they had a higher rate of heart attack, stroke or death over about three years. It is observational, so it shows association, not cause. See our arterial plaque page.
• Brain. A 2025 study reported high plastic levels in brain tissue. Germany’s risk assessor, BfR, called it carefully done but flagged contamination and signal-assignment problems and said the amounts look implausibly high. More in microplastics in the brain.
• Method limits. A 2025 validation study by Rauert and colleagues concluded the main technique, Py-GC/MS, is not currently suitable for polyethylene and PVC in biological samples because fats and other material interfere.
• Regulators. The FDA says current evidence does not show that the levels of micro- and nanoplastics detected in food pose a risk to human health. BfR says the same about food exposure.

So Volkheimer’s core observation, that particles can cross the gut, has held up. Whether today’s particles at today’s doses cause disease is the open question. For how long particles may persist, see how long microplastics stay in your body.

What can you do today?

You can’t undo 50 years of plastic production, but you can trim the contacts that research links most clearly to release: heat, fat, wear and time. None of these steps has been shown to change a health outcome. They reduce exposure you can control.

1. Don’t heat food in plastic. Microwave in glass or ceramic, even when a tub says microwave-safe. Our guide on microwaving plastic containers explains why.
2. Keep soft PVC away from fatty food. Some cling films are PVC with plasticizers that move into cheese and meat. The plastic wrap guide covers which films are which.
3. Store leftovers in glass or steel, especially oily or acidic ones. See plastic-free food storage.
4. Retire scratched, cloudy or warped plastic that touches food. Worn surfaces shed more than new ones.
5. Read the resin code where there is one. A 3 means PVC. Our recycling numbers guide decodes the rest.
6. Be skeptical of detox claims. No treatment has been shown to remove microplastics from the body.

Use the App

Which of your kitchen plastics is PVC?

Scan a food wrap, container or bottle. The app reports its declared material, including PVC where the product information names it, and suggests a glass or steel swap for jobs that involve heat or fatty food.

Why this story matters beyond 1974

The documents raise a fair question about who should fund and run the science. Industry groups now back microplastics research programs, and they emphasize uncertainty. Uncertainty is real: our own coverage regularly notes weak methods and small samples. But uncertainty also cuts the other way. It was a reason to investigate in 1975, and it remains one today. The useful response for a household is neither panic nor dismissal. Reduce the avoidable contacts, follow independent research and treat strong claims from any side with the same care.