How to Remove Microplastics from Your Body

By now, most of us know microplastics are in our bodies. What we haven’t known is whether we can do anything about it — short of moving off the grid.

An Australian study published earlier this year just demonstrated something surprising: according to the study, you can dramatically lower the plastic chemicals in your body in just seven days — without moving to a remote cabin, throwing out your wardrobe, or quitting your job to grow your own food. The trick is mostly about what you eat and how it gets to your plate.

The Hidden Ingredient in Modern Life

Plastic is everywhere. It wraps our food, lines our cans, holds our shampoo, coats our cookware, and floats invisibly in the air we breathe. But the problem isn’t just the material itself. Plastic is made from more than 16,000 different chemicals, and a lot of them are designed to leak. They make plastic flexible, glossy, fire-resistant, or shatterproof — and they slowly migrate into whatever the plastic touches. Including us.

Two families of these “plastic-associated chemicals,” or PACs, have scientists especially worried: phthalates and bisphenols (the most famous being BPA). Both are so called endocrine disruptors, meaning they “scramble” the hormone signals your body relies on. Studies have linked them to heart disease, metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, inflammation, and unhealthy cholesterol levels even though true causality in humans has not been established. And every time regulators ban one — like BPA in baby bottles — manufacturers tend to swap in a cousin chemical, like BPS, that is structurally similar and just as suspicious.

The PERTH Trial

Researchers in Western Australia wanted hard answers, so they ran the PERTH Trial (Plastic Exposure Reduction Transforms Health), published in Nature Medicine. They tracked 211 healthy adults, collecting urine, blood, and even nasal rinse samples to measure exactly which plastic chemicals were inside their bodies and where they were coming from.

The initial findings were already unsettling. Every single participant — 100% of them — was excreting at least six different plastic chemicals on any given day. The average Australian in the study was carrying around BPA levels nearly 96 times higher than the safety limit set by the European Food Safety Authority. BPS, BPA’s so-called “safer” replacement, showed up at levels twice as high as those measured in Americans.

The questionnaires pointed towards likely causes. People who ate more highly processed foods, plastic-packaged foods, and canned foods had more phthalates and bisphenols in their urine, as did heavy users of shampoos, makeup, and skin products. Canned foods and drinks were tied to higher BPA. Even though people have become more aware of the dietary components of food, the hidden, undeclared ingredient in modern eating habits, it turns out, was plastic.

The Seven-Day Experiment

The researchers picked 60 of those participants and randomly sorted them into five groups for a tightly controlled seven-day trial. Three of the groups ate only food sourced from a network of more than 100 producers who had stripped plastic out of every step — what the researchers called “paddock to plate.” That meant produce never wrapped in cling film, meat never sitting in plastic trays, dairy never bottled in polyethylene, and meals never stored or reheated in plastic containers. One group also swapped out kitchenware and food prep tools for glass, steel, and wood. Another swapped out personal care products like shampoo, soap, and lotion for low-plastic alternatives. A fourth group did all of the above. A fifth group changed nothing and acted as the control.

Importantly, the food groups received the exact same number of calories they had been eating before. Nobody had to lose weight, fast, or go vegan. The only thing that changed was how much plastic touched their food and bodies.

What Happened in One Week

In just seven days, the people eating the “low-plastic diet” had striking drops in their urinary plastic chemicals:

• Mono-n-butyl phthalate (a flexibility additive) fell by 37.5%.
• Monobenzyl phthalate fell by 53.5%.
• Bisphenol A — the famous BPA — fell by 59.7%.

Food was the biggest driver. Adding plastic-free kitchenware pushed the numbers down further. And switching personal care products alone — with no diet change — was enough to lower one phthalate, which tells you something about what we absorb through our skin.

There was one strange exception. DEHP, a phthalate used in vinyl and food packaging, did not drop. The researchers think this chemical may build up and get stored in body fat over time, so a single week isn’t enough to flush it out. That mystery will take longer studies to solve.

The researchers also found evidence of real health consequences. People with more DEHP-related chemicals in their urine tended to show worse markers for inflammation and heart risk, supporting years of laboratory and observational research linking these chemicals to cardiovascular and metabolic disease.

Why This Matters

For decades, the conversation about plastic has focused on what it does to oceans and wildlife. The PERTH Trial turns the lens inward. It is one of the first rigorous human experiments to show that everyday choices can measurably reduce the chemical burden inside your body, and that the timeline for change is shorter than almost anyone assumed.

We tend to think of plastic pollution as someone else’s problem to solve — a regulatory failure, a packaging industry mess, something that needs fixing at the policy level. That is still true. But the PERTH data makes a quieter point: a meaningful portion of your personal chemical exposure is sitting in your fridge, your pantry, and your shower caddy right now.

What You Can Actually Do

A fully plastic-free life is neither affordable nor realistic for most people. Most organically grown fruits and vegetables in your Whole Foods market are packaged in plastic containers. Even if you get your organically grown fruits and vegetables at the weekly farmer’s market, you are likely to take them home in plastic bags. But the PERTH data points to a handful of changes that move the needle without requiring a lifestyle overhaul:

Eat fresh, minimally processed foods when you can — and try to buy them without plastic packaging. Cut back on canned foods and drinks; can linings are a major source of BPA. Store leftovers in glass, steel, or ceramic, and never microwave food in plastic. Cook with wooden or stainless utensils. Check your bathroom shelf: shampoos, lotions, and soaps can carry phthalates too, and switching to products with simpler ingredient lists makes a measurable difference. And open a window. Household dust carries these chemicals as well.

None of this requires perfection. The PERTH participants still lived in plastic-filled homes, breathed plastic-laden air, and wore plastic-blended clothes. They simply changed how plastic met their food and skin. In a week, their bodies responded.

None of this is a cure. But the PERTH Trial at least answers the question most people have quietly been asking: does any of this actually make a difference? In one week, it did.