Microplastics, containing toxic pollutants and chemicals, are increasingly getting deposited in our human respiratory tract, and can pose serious health risks, warned a study. Researchers in 2022 showed that humans might inhale about 16.2 bits of microplastic every hour, which is equivalent to a credit card over an entire week. And these microplastics -- tiny debris in the environment generated from the degradation of plastic products -- usually contain toxic pollutants and chemicals.

To understand its effects, a team of Australian researchers developed a computational fluid dynamics model to analyse microplastic transport and deposition in the upper airway. They explored the movement of microplastics with different shapes (spherical, tetrahedral, and cylindrical) and sizes (1.6, 2.56, and 5.56 microns) and under slow and fast breathing conditions.