Playing with plastic toy building bricks creates microplastic and nanoplastic pollution

It’s one of the most popular and creative toys around, but playing with plastic building bricks could create something much less desirable in households and childcare settings: large amounts of micro- and nanoplastic particles. While it remains unknown whether such plastic particles pose any risk to health, the findings add yet another source of emerging indoor pollutants and the researchers recommend caution to avoid inhaling or swallowing them.

It’s widely known that micro- and nanoplastics are ubiquitous in the environment, originating from all sorts of plastic materials we touch and use every day, from food packaging and plastic cookware, to carpets, clothes and children’s toys. However, there are still big gaps in our understanding of the origins and fate of these tiny particles and, until now, nobody had explored toy building bricks as a potential source of them.