Fig. 1
Schematic of nanoplastic exposure and dosimetry. a We utilized a 1 mm2 microparticle as a representative microplastic (blue). The extrapolation of this microplastic microparticle to a nanoparticle is 1 × 106. Our representative nanopolystyrene nanobeads are spherical and 21 nm in diameter (red). Therefore, there would be 2.39 × 1014 nanopolystyrene beads in a single plastic microparticle. b Cox et al. identified that women inhale an average of 132 microplastics. The upper bound of this measurement (279 microplastics), is more representative of exposure for pregnant women. The calculated dosage is 6.67 × 1016 nanopolystyrene beads. c The surface area of the Sprague Dawley rat lung is significantly smaller (0.409 m2) compared with the human lung (62.7 m2). The calculated dose for a laboratory rat is 4.34 × 1014. The exposure dose used in these studies was 2.64 × 1014 nanopolystyrene beads