Did you know baby poo is loaded with microplastics?
What this all means for human health — and, more urgently, for infant health — scientists are now racing to find out. Photo by Mahesh Patel / Pixabay
By Matt Simon
Whenever a plastic bag or bottle degrades, it breaks into ever smaller pieces that work their way into nooks in the environment.
When you wash synthetic fabrics, tiny plastic fibres break loose and flow out to sea. When you drive, plastic bits fly off your tires and brakes. That’s why literally everywhere scientists look, they’re finding microplastics — specks of synthetic material that measure less than five millimetres long. They’re on the most remote mountaintops and in the deepest oceans. They’re blowing vast distances in the wind to sully once-pristine regions like the Arctic. In 11 protected areas in the western U.S., the equivalent of 120 million ground-up plastic bottles are falling out of the sky each year.