About Microplastic Defense
This site exists because most writing about microplastics falls into one of two failure modes: alarmism that treats every study as proof of catastrophe, or dismissal that treats uncertainty as proof of safety. Neither is honest. The research is genuinely interesting, genuinely incomplete, and genuinely worth understanding — without the panic.
Our approach
- Careful language. We say "studies suggest" when studies suggest, and "established" only when something is. Where science is unsettled, we say so.
- Sources over vibes. Claims link to peer-reviewed research or expert-body reports, not to other blogs.
- Honest reviews. When a product category over-promises — consumer test kits are a good example — we say so on the review page itself, even though it costs us commissions.
- Proportionality. We rank recommendations by likely impact and cost, and we tell you when something isn't worth your money.
How we research and fact-check
Every study we cite is read in the original — not summarized from a press release or another blog — and linked directly to its DOI so you can verify it yourself. Where a published finding has been formally disputed (a journal correspondence, a failed replication, a regulator disagreeing with a headline number), we say so and link the disagreement, rather than only reporting the more dramatic number. Articles get updated when material new research changes the picture; where that's happened, the page shows both the original publish date and the update date.
Who's behind this
Microplastic Defense is written and published by Timothy Dunbar.
He is not a scientist, and doesn't play one here: no lab, no funding, no institutional affiliation, and no first-hand product testing. What he brings is narrower, and on this topic oddly scarce — the patience to read the primary literature in the original and report what it actually found, including when that turns out to be less than the headline claimed.
That method is visible on every page rather than just asserted here. The widely repeated claim that we each eat a credit card's worth of plastic every week is a good test of it: the number traces back to an advocacy-commissioned analysis whose methodology was later challenged in the peer-reviewed literature, and a probabilistic model put median intake orders of magnitude lower. Both are on the page, because leaving the second one off would have made for a better headline and a worse guide.
Microplastic Defenseis independently written and published — it is not a hospital, a research institution, or a government body, and doesn't claim to be one. It exists because the available reporting on microplastics tends toward one of two extremes, and a plain, sourced middle ground was missing. Questions, corrections, or a study we should cover? Reach us through the contact page.
How this site makes money
Microplastic Defense participates in the Amazon Associates program. When you buy through links on our review pages, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. This never changes our editorial conclusions — see our full affiliate disclosure.
What we are not
We are not doctors, and nothing here is medical advice. For health concerns, talk to a qualified professional. For the current state of the health evidence, start with our health effects guide.