Update: Ecotera Health Receives IRB Approval for Decentralized Human Urine Microplastics and Nanoplastics Study
IRB-approved longitudinal study will evaluate a scalable, at-home approach to repeated microplastics and nanoplastics measurements using the EcoExposure™ platform.
The IRB-approved study will be conducted under the oversight of Principal Investigator Mona Ascha, M.D., with the Ecotera Health research team led by Melinda B. Chu, M.D., M.B.A., and Cameron Young, M.Phil., M.D. Candidate at Harvard Medical School.
September 2026 — Ecotera Health has received Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval for its Urine Microplastics and Nanoplastics Observational Study, marking an important milestone in the development of the EcoExposure™ platform.
The study will evaluate a decentralized approach to repeated urine sampling and optical measurement over approximately 12 weeks. Participants will complete study activities remotely using an at-home workflow incorporating smartphone imaging.
The initial study is intentionally small and is designed to evaluate workflow feasibility, repeated measurements, image quality, participant adherence and the practical operation of a decentralized human exposure study.
Building Toward Scalable Human Microplastics Research
Human microplastics and nanoplastics research remains constrained by the difficulty of repeatedly measuring biological samples using laboratory-intensive analytical approaches.
To our knowledge, the Ecotera Health study is the first human urine microplastics and nanoplastics study designed from the outset around a scalable, decentralized measurement model, enabling repeated measurements at home or in research settings rather than requiring every measurement to be performed using centralized laboratory instrumentation.
“There is still an enormous amount we don't know about microplastics and nanoplastics in the human body, including how measurements vary within the same person over time,” said Melinda B. Chu, M.D., M.B.A., Founder and CEO of Ecotera Health and inventor of EcoExposure™.
“Answering those questions will ultimately require moving beyond small numbers of isolated measurements toward longitudinal datasets involving thousands of people and potentially much larger populations. Our first study is an important step toward determining whether we can build the infrastructure to make that possible.”
From Feasibility to Population-Scale Research
The first study will focus on establishing the real-world performance of the decentralized workflow before Ecotera Health expands the approach into larger human studies.
The longer-term objective is to create a scalable research platform capable of supporting repeated microplastics and nanoplastics measurements across large and geographically distributed populations.
Study Team
The study is led by Principal Investigator Mona Ascha, M.D., with Melinda B. Chu, M.D., M.B.A., Founder and CEO of Ecotera Health and inventor of EcoExposure™, serving as Study Director and Research Coordinator.
Cameron Young, M.Phil., M.D. Candidate at Harvard Medical School, serves on the research team as a Research Associate, supporting study operations and research activities.
Small particles. Bigger answers.
Ecotera Health is excited to begin this next phase of research!
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