ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — UNM researchers recently published a study showing microplastics can be found in the placenta during pregnancy. That means babies are exposed before they’re even born.

But researchers say there’s no reason to panic – at least until they figure out exactly how dangerous microplastics are.

“I can tell you that the more data we get, the more sobering this is,” said Dr. Matthew Campen, pharmaceutical sciences professor at UNM.

Campen is not the first researcher to study microplastics, but he knows he’s not the last.

“There’s absolutely a huge wave coming, we’re at the tip of the iceberg,” Campen said.

Campen recently published a study showing evidence of microplastics in the human placenta. It was the first time researchers were able to measure microplastics in human tissue.

“We found that every single placenta we looked at had some amount of plastics in it,” Campen said.

Measurements ranged from 6 to 790 micrograms of microplastics, but Campen says it confirms a longstanding theory.

“Everyone has them, and there’s no avoiding these things at this point,” Campen said. “That’s one of the big revelations. But now we’re powered to start looking at what, how does this affect health?”

There isn’t much research that definitively shows how microplastics affect the body. Campen says the technology his team developed can help answer some of those questions moving forward.

“I think people shouldn’t be stressing themselves out, especially if you’re pregnant, you’ve already got stresses enough – you don’t need to stress out the fetus,” Campen said. “We need to be thinking more about how does our government, how do our leaders start attacking this problem, because the solutions are not going to be something that individuals can really deal with, without a lot of help.”

Campen believes UNM could be at the forefront of microplastics research. He revealed that state leaders just gave them a funding boost to purchase new equipment for research projects.