Microplastics are a big environmental issue. They’ve been found in oceans, drinking water, seafood, the air we breathe, and increasingly throughout the human body, from the placenta to the brain.

A new study by researchers in Italy, published in the European Heart Journal, adds another organ to that growing list: the heart’s own blood supply. But while the discovery of microplastics in coronary blood is concerning, the most intriguing finding may not be the plastics themselves. It is how they may be getting there.

Researchers found that people who smoke were six times more likely to have detectable micro- and nanoplastics in the blood supplying their hearts than non-smokers. Even more notable, every smoker who was also exposed to higher levels of air pollution had plastics detected in their blood, compared with just 12.5% of people who neither smoked nor experienced high pollution exposure. That is a remarkable difference, even in a small population.

Rather than simply confirming another harmful consequence of smoking, these findings raise an intriguing possibility: cigarettes may also act as an efficient delivery system for microscopic plastic particles. For decades we’ve understood why smoking damages the heart and blood vessels. Tobacco smoke contains thousands of chemicals that trigger inflammation, damage blood vessels, promote clotting and accelerate the build-up of fat inside arteries.

The new research suggests another mechanism could be operating........

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