Plastics are everywhere.

They hold the water we drink and many of the foods we eat. They're a part of our lives.

But what about the plastics we can't see?

"Nanoplastics are very small micro-particles that are formed from the breakdown of plastics," said Dr. Grant Bailey, a cardiologist with South Denver Cardiology Associates and AdventHealth.

And those tiny micro and nanoplastics are being found in more and more spots.

They've been found in beer, even the human placenta.

"And so what they're finding now is that nanoplastics are entering the food chain and they're entering the ecological cycle," Bailey said. "So they're being found in animals and of course, humans who ingest those animals. We're also finding nanoplastics inside people."

A new study published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at the presence of those nanoplastics from inside the human body, specifically in the plaque inside the carotid artery in the neck.

"And of course, not surprisingly they found a large majority of the plaques that were resected had the presence of several different plastic particles inside of them," Bailey said.

That study found people with microplastics in their carotid arteries were twice as likely to have a heart attack, stroke or die compared to people who had none.

Bailey said this data is concerning because heart disease is already the leading cause of death nationwide.

"When these particles enter your body, they act the same way as if someone who is ingesting smoke or inhaling smoke from tobacco or from air pollution," Bailey said. "So the theory here is that the ingestion of microplastics is akin to smoking or air pollution or having very high cholesterol, that it's another risk factor that increases a person's risk of heart attack and stroke."

This kind of research is new and Bailey stressed we need more.

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