NeurotoxicologyJun 24, 2025

How Tiny Plastics Cross the Brain's Protective Barrier and May Harm Nerve Cells: Current Findings and Future Directions

Updated Feb 10, 2026

Abstract

Micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs) may cross the blood-brain barrier, potentially causing irreversible toxic damage to the central nervous system.

MNPs can enter the human body through multiple pathways.
They are associated with the disruption of tight and adherens junctions, enabling their passage across the blood-brain barrier.
Key mechanisms linked to MNP-induced neurotoxicity include oxidative stress, inflammatory responses, mitochondrial dysfunction, and iron metabolism disorders.
MNPs may facilitate co-exposure to other environmental pollutants, leading to enhanced neurological damage.
Significant interconnections exist among the mechanisms involved in MNP neurotoxicity.

Simplified

Micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs), as emerging global pollutants, pose increasing threats to ecological environments and human health due to their widespread distribution and potential toxicity. Recent studies have demonstrated that MNPs not only enter the human body through multiple pathways but may also cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB), causing irreversible toxic damage to the central nervous system (CNS). This review summarizes the possible mechanisms of MNPs crossing the BBB, including the disruption of tight junctions and adherens juctions, paracellular transport, and endocytosis pathways. We focused on investigating the key roles of oxidative stress, inflammatory responses, mitochondrial dysfunction, and iron metabolism disorders in MNP-induced neurotoxicity, and discovered significant interconnections among these mechanisms. Furthermore, as carriers of pollutants, MNPs can facilitate co-exposure with other environmental contaminants such as heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants, producing synergistic toxic effects that further aggravate neurological damage. This review synthesizes the main research progress in this field, evaluates the potential toxicological impacts of MNPs on the CNS, and identifies key scientific questions that need to be addressed in future research, thereby providing theoretical foundations for in-depth studies of MNP neurotoxicity mechanisms and risk assessment.

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Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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