Microplastics in your home: a safety profile
Moderate risk for your homeNot medical or professional safety advice, and not a substitute for a qualified clinician — consult one. Full disclaimer →
Synthetic-textile fiber shedding from clothing and home furnishings, plus aerosolized tire-wear particles in urban air; the indoor/outdoor air exposure route is increasingly recognised in WHO assessments.
What is microplastics?
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Risk for your household
Moderate riskSynthetic-textile fiber shedding from clothing and home furnishings, plus aerosolized tire-wear particles in urban air; the indoor/outdoor air exposure route is increasingly recognised in WHO assessments.
Regulatory consensus
1 regulatory bodyhas classified Microplastics.
| Agency | Year | Classification | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| IARC | — | review ongoing | causal evidence insufficient |
Regulators apply different standards of evidence — animal-data weighting, exposure-pattern assumptions, epidemiological power thresholds — which is why two scientific bodies can review the same data and reach different conclusions. The disagreement is the data.
Where your home encounter microplastics
- Consumer Products — Plastic bottles and containers, Food packaging, Plastic toys and household items
- Drinking Water — Leaching from plastic pipes, Migration from bottled water containers
- Indoor Environments — Off-gassing from plastic furniture, Degradation of plastic products
Safer alternatives
Lower-risk approaches that achieve a similar outcome to Microplastics:
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NSF-certified activated carbon filtration
Trade-offs: Does not remove all contaminants. Requires filter replacement.Relative cost: 2-5× conventional
Frequently asked questions
Is microplastics safe for your home?
Synthetic-textile fiber shedding from clothing and home furnishings, plus aerosolized tire-wear particles in urban air; the indoor/outdoor air exposure route is increasingly recognised in WHO assessments.
What products contain microplastics?
Microplastics appears in: Plastic bottles and containers (Consumer products); Food packaging (Consumer products); Leaching from plastic pipes (Drinking water); Migration from bottled water containers (Drinking water); Off-gassing from plastic furniture (Indoor environments).
See Microplastics in the home app
Look up products containing microplastics, compare to alternatives, and explore the full data record.
Open in home View raw API dataSources (1)
- WHO: Microplastics in Drinking-water (2019) — report
Reference data, not professional advice. Aggregates publicly available regulatory and scientific data; not a substitute for medical, legal, or regulatory advice. Why we built ALETHEIA →