NYU opens US-first plastics center to look at both health risks, solutions

New York University is putting plastics medical researchers and engineers together in what it says will be a U.S.-first, a center to both examine the health and environmental risks from the materials and find alternatives.

A Oct. 1 news release from NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering and Grossman School of Medicine said the NYC Center for Healthier Plastic Solutions will be “the first research center in the United States dedicated to understanding the full range of health and environmental threats posed by plastics, and to developing new materials that curtail them.”

“We know microplastics are building up in the environment and in our bodies, even as many questions about their long-term effects remain unresolved,” said co-director Miguel Modestino, a professor of chemical engineering at Tandon and director of its Sustainable Engineering Initiative.

“Rather than waiting for perfect answers, we will design materials that preserve the benefits of plastics and minimize the generation of persistent microplastic waste, and use AI and automation to speed up that NYU discovery process,” he said.

The center’s other co-director, Leo Trasande, is a pediatrics professor at Grossman long involved in research on plastics health issues, including a 2024 study from the Endocrine Society looking at healthcare costs of endocrine-disrupting chemicals used in plastics.

“Microplastics and chemicals in plastics are known to contribute to a broad array of conditions that span the life course, costing nearly $250 billion in disease annually,” Trasande said. “This is why it is important for physicians, biochemical scientists and engineers to work together to develop solutions that will help us keep the next generation healthy.”

Trasande also directs NYU’s Center for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards and organizes NYU’s Plastics and Human Health Symposiums, which have been held annually since 2024.

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