The air is plasticized,
and we are no better protected from it outdoors than indoors. Minuscule plastic
fibers, fragments, foam, and films are shed from plastic stuff and are
perpetually floating into and free-falling down on us from the atmosphere. Rain
flushes micro- and nanoplastics out of the sky back to Earth. Plastic-filled
snow is accumulating in urban areas like Bremen, Germany, and remote regions
like the Arctic and Swiss Alps.
Wind and storms carry
particles shed from plastic items and debris through the air for dozens, even
hundreds, of miles before depositing them back on Earth. Dongguan, Paris,
London, and other metropolises around the world are enveloped in air that is perpetually permeated by tiny plastic particles small
enough to lodge themselves in human lungs.
Urban regions are
especially full of what scientists believe is one of the most hazardous
particulate pollution varieties: synthetic tire debris. As a result of the
normal friction caused by brake pads and asphalt roads, and of weathering and
wear, these tires shed plastic fragments, metals, and other toxic materials.
Like the plastic used to manufacture consumer items and packaging, synthetic
tires contain a manufacturer’s proprietary blend of poisons meant to improve a
plastic product’s appearance and performance.
Tire particles from the
billions of cars, trucks, bikes, tractors, and other vehicles moving across the
world escape into air, soil, and water bodies. Scientists are just beginning to
understand the grave danger. In 2020, researchers in Washington State
determined that the presence of 6PPD-quinone,
a byproduct of rubber-stabilizing chemical 6PPD, was playing a major factor in
a mysterious long-term die-off of coho salmon in the US Pacific Northwest.
When Washington’s fall rains heralded spawning salmon’s return from sea to
stream, the precipitation also washed car tire fragments and other plastic
particles into these freshwater ecosystems.
Up to 90 percent of
all coho salmon returning to spawn in this region have died –
much greater than is considered natural. As the study’s lead author,
environmental chemist Zhenyu Tian, explained in a 2020 interview with Oregon
Public Broadcasting, 6PPD-quinone appears to be a key culprit: “You put this
chemical, this transformation product, into a fish tank, and coho die… really
fast.”
While other researchers
had previously searched for, and detected, microplastic dispersed in indoor and
outdoor air, Alvise Vianello, an Italian scientist and associate professor at
Aalborg University in Denmark, was the first to do so using a mannequin emulating human breathing via a
mechanical lung system, publishing his study’s results in 2019. (Despite the
evidence his research provides – that plastic is getting inside of human bodies
and could be harming us – it was not until 2022 that modern health researchers
first confirmed the presence of microplastics in human lungs. And as
comprehensive health research has ramped up, we are just beginning to
understand how having plastic particles around us and in us at all times might
be affecting human health.)
Vianello and his
colleague Jes Vollertsen, a professor of environmental studies at Aalborg
University, explained that they’ve brought their findings to researchers at
their university’s hospital for future collaborative research, perhaps
searching for plastic inside human cadavers. “We now have enough evidence that
we should start looking for microplastic inside human airways,”
Vollertsen said. “Until then, it’s unclear whether or not we should be
worried that we are breathing in plastic.”
When I met Vollertsen in
2019, he had speculated that some of the microplastic we breathe in could be
expelled when we exhale. Yet, even if that’s true, our lungs are indeed holding
onto some of the plastic that enters, potentially resulting in damage.
Other researchers, like
Joana Correia Prata, DVM, PhD, who studied microplastics at the University of Aveiro in
Portugal, have highlighted the need for systematic research on the human health effects of breathing in microplastic.
“[Microplastic] particles and fibers, depending on their density, size, and
shape, can reach the deep lung causing chronic inflammation,” she said. Prata noted that people working in environments with
high levels of airborne microplastics, such as those employed in the textile
industry, often suffer respiratory problems. The perpetual presence of a
comparatively lower amount of microplastics in our homes has not yet been
linked to specific ailments.
While
they’ve dissected the bodies of countless nonhuman animals since the 1970s,
scientists only began exploring human tissues for signs of nano- and
microplastic in earnest during the late 2010s and early 2020s. This, despite
strong evidence suggesting plastic particles – and the toxins that adhere to
them – permeate
our environment and are widespread in our diets. From 2010 to
2020, scientists have detected microplastic
in the bodies of fish and shellfish as well as in packaged meats, processed
foods, beer, sea salt, soft drinks, tap water, and bottled water. There are tiny plastic
particles embedded in conventionally grown fruits and vegetables sold
in supermarkets and food stalls.
As
the world rapidly ramped up its production of plastic in the 1950s and ’60s,
two other booms occurred simultaneously: that of the world’s human population
and the continued development of industrial agriculture. The latter would feed
the former and was made possible thanks to the development of
petrochemical-based plastics, fertilizers, and pesticides.
By
the late 1950s, farmers struggling to keep up with feeding the world’s growing
population welcomed new research papers and bulletins published by agricultural
scientists extolling the benefits of using plastic – specifically dark-colored,
low-density polyethylene sheets – to boost the yields of growing crops.
Scientists
laid out step-by-step instructions on how the plastic sheets should be rolled
out over crops to retain water, reducing the need for irrigation, and to control
weeds and insects, which couldn’t as easily penetrate plastic-wrapped soil.
This
“plastic-culture” has become a standard farming practice, transforming the
soils humans have long sown from something familiar to something unknown. Crops
grown with plastic seem to offer higher yields in the short term, while in the
long term, use of plastic in agriculture could create toxic soils that
repel water instead of absorbing it, a potentially catastrophic
problem. This presence of plastic particles in the soil causes increased
erosion and dust – as well as the dissolution of
ancient symbiotic relationships between soil microbes, insects,
and fungi that help keep plants – and our planet – alive.
From
the polluted soils we’ve created, plants pull in tiny nanoplastic particles
through their roots along with the water they need to survive, with serious
consequences: an accumulation of nanoplastic particles in a plant’s roots
diminishes its ability to absorb water, impairing growth and development.
Scientists have also found evidence that nanoplastic may
alter a plant’s genetic makeup in a manner increasing its
disease susceptibility.
Based
on the levels of micro- and nanoplastics detected in human diets, it’s
estimated that most
people unwittingly ingest anywhere from 39,000 to 52,000 bits of microplastic in
their diets each year. That number increases by 90,000 microplastic particles
for people who regularly consume bottled water, and by 4,000 particles for
those who drink water from municipal taps.
In
2018, scientists in Austria detected microplastic in
human stool samples collected from eight volunteers from eight
different countries across Europe and Asia. By 2023, scientists had detected
the presence of plastic particles in people’s lungs, bloodstreams, veins, placentas, feces, testes/semen,
and breast milk.
And while the long-term health impacts of plastic on the human body are still
unknown, it is well understood that plastic has toxic effects on laboratory animals, marine
wildlife, and human
cell lines.
In a
2022 study,
researchers showed that nanoplastics less than 100 nanometers wide can enter the
blood and organs of animals and cause inflammation, toxicity, and changes in
neurological function.
Clearly,
micro- and nanoplastics are getting into us, with at least some escaping
through our digestive tracts. We seem to be drinking, eating, and breathing it
in.
And these
tiny particles are just one component of plastic’s myriad forms of pollution.
From the moment plastic’s fossil fuel ingredients are extracted, to its
production, transportation, use, and eventual disposal in landfills,
incinerators, and the environment, the plastics pipeline emits toxic chemicals
that pollute Earth’s air, soils, waters, seas, animals, plants, and human
bodies, and releases greenhouse gases that drive the climate crisis. Most often
harmed are already underserved groups, including Black, Brown, Indigenous,
rural, poor, and fence line communities everywhere, driving severe injustice
worldwide.
This
adapted excerpt is from Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic
Crisis, by Erica Cirino (Island Press, 2021). Reproduced with
permission from Island Press. This adaptation was produced for the web by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent
Media Institute.
For
more information, see Environmental Defence website.
Erica Cirino is a contributor to the Observatory and
a science writer and artist who explores the intersection of the human and
nonhuman worlds.
