They’ve even seemingly invaded our bodies, with studies finding them inside our arteries, reproductive organs, and brains. It’s hard to even grapple with everything that exposes you to plastic on a daily basis. “As the temperature of the liquid inside a container increases, the release of microplastics generally increases too,” Liu noted in an essay about the work for The Conversation. The researchers found that drinking just ten ounces of hot coffee out of all-plastic cups could result in the drinker ingesting 363,000 pieces of microplastic particles a year. Experts noted that they could be the result of contamination, triggering a major debate over the legitimacy of the findings.