Microplastics act as carriers that concentrate other pollutants, and occupationally exposed workers show elevated rates of lung disease and cancer risk. Existing regulation addresses single substances rather than the particle and chemical mixtures people are actually exposed to.
An April 2026 review in the Indian Journal of Community Medicine framing microplastic exposure as an unresolved global public health problem. It maps the food, air and contact pathways through which particles under 5 mm reach the body, and argues that current regulatory frameworks fail to account for the combined effect of the particles and the chemicals they carry.
