Every time you take a bite of food or swallow a drink of water, you could be consuming microscopic pieces of plastic trash, as many as 121,000 of them per year, a new study shows.

The study, published this week in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, looked at existing data on microplastics – tiny pieces of debris smaller than a sesame seed – in food, liquids and air, and then used U.S. dietary guidelines to calculate how much humans might consume each year.

The result: On average, we each consume an estimated 70,000 and 121,000 particles per year, with rates rising up to 100,000 more for those who drink only bottled water.

Microplastics, tiny pieces of plastic that come from the degradation of larger plastic products like water bottles and plastic packaging, have been found everywhere from a pristine area deep in the Pyrenees Mountains to Arctic Sea Ice. They are in the fish we eat, the water we drink, the salt we put on our food and the air we breathe.

“Human reliance on plastic packaging and food processing methods for major food groups such as meats, fruits and veggies is a growing problem," Kieran Cox, a marine biology Ph.D candidate at the University of Victoria and one of the study's authors, said in a press release. "Our research suggests microplastics will continue to be found in the majority - if not all - of items intended for human consumption."

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The health effects of eating, drinking and breathing microplastics is unknown, but experts say their prevalence in our environment and our food chain is alarming.

The data used for the study represents only about 15% of American's daily calorie intake. Microplastics in things like bread, processed foods, meats and dairy and most other things we eat on a daily basis hasn't yet been widely analyzed.

“It is really highly likely there is going to be large amounts of plastic particles in these," Cox told The Guardian. "You could be heading into the hundreds of thousands.”

Cox told the newspaper the study had changed his own behavior.

“I definitely steer away from plastic packaging and try to avoid bottled water as much as possible,” he said. “Removing single-use plastic from your life and supporting companies that are moving away from plastic packaging is going to have a non-trivial impact. The facts are simple. We are producing a lot of plastic and it is ending up in the ecosystems, which we are a part of.”