A small but striking Italian study has found microplastics in the blood of heart attack survivors at rates nearly three times higher than in people with healthy coronary arteries, quietly repositioning plastic pollution as a potential hazard not just to oceans and ecosystems, but to the human heart itself. Published in the European Heart Journal, the research does not yet prove that plastics cause cardiac events, but it documents a pattern — shaped by smoking, air quality, and accumulated environmental exposure — that is growing difficult to dismiss. We have long understood that the world we b