Professor Im Taegyu's Team at Sejong University Identifies Health Risks of Human Exposure to Microplastics

Publication in International Prestigious Academic Journal

Sejong University announced on the 15th that Professor Im Taegyu's research team from the Department of Food and Biotechnology has revealed the dermal penetration and potential to cause dermatitis of microplastics present in nature.

Provided by Sejong University.

Professor Im Taegyu's research team, together with Professor Hong Seonggwan from the Department of Chemistry at Chung-Ang University, manufactured fragmented microplastics and confirmed their characteristics through Raman analysis. When fragmented microplastics were exposed to human-derived skin cells and RNA sequencing was performed on the changes, it was confirmed that the expression of inflammation-related RNA significantly increased.

The research team also applied fragmented microplastics to the skin tissues of experimental mice and human skin tissues to observe changes in skin permeability. Based on the study, they verified that the applied microplastics reached the dermis layer of the skin tissue. Additionally, they discovered that gene and protein expression increased in a concentration-dependent manner during the process of treating the experimental mice's skin tissue with microplastics.

The results of this study were published as a paper in the internationally renowned journal, Journal of Hazardous Materials.

Professor Im commented, "Through this research, we were able to clarify the risks of human exposure to microplastics."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.