Jaime Ross never expected to study microplastics. But when the opportunity presented itself to investigate the potential impacts of microplastics on the body, she felt like the timing was right to try something new.
“Researchers have been looking more at the impact of microplastics on marine life and oceans but not the impact on human consumption and disease. We are interested in microplastics because it seemed like a black box in discussions about human health,” explains Ross, a University of Rhode Island (URI) assistant professor with joint appointments in the Department of Biomedical andPharmaceutical Sciences and the George and Anne Ryan Institute for Neuroscience.
Ross’s research seeks to rectify this gap in knowledge and answer foundational questions about the life cycle of microplastics in the body and whether chronic exposure to microplastics affects brain health.
Written by Clea Harrelson ’20
This article originally appeared in the Spring 2022 edition of Momentum, the University of Rhode Island’s Research Magazine.