Scientists are increasingly alarmed over the soaring amounts of microplastics (small pieces of plastic less than five millimeters) and nanoplastics (extremely small, sub-micrometer plastic particles) being discovered throughout our planet, our bodies and our food. Just this past January, new studies found huge numbers of plastic particles in bottled water and microplastics in nearly 90 percent of sampled proteins like beef and tofu. These reports follow many others that have found microplastics and nanoplastics in nearly every crevice of our world: clouds and rivers, Arctic sea ice and sea mammals, heart tissue and breast milk and even placentas.

With global plastics waste on pace to nearly triple by 2060, the problem is only set to worsen. The proliferation of microplastics is an outgrowth of the larger perils associated with plastics production. Plastic contains many toxic chemicals, and plastic waste saturates our land and oceans. According to a 2022 OECD report, only 9 percent of plastic waste is recycled, with most of it “ending up in landfill, incinerated or leaking into the environment.”

Major corporations, from chemical companies to consumer brands, have a vested interest in perpetuating plastics production. Powerful industry organizations spend millions every year lobbying to expand plastics production and kill regulatory efforts to limit harms tied to plastics.

The oil and gas industry sees plastics, which are made from fossil fuels, as an expanding avenue for profits. Plastics production is interlocked with the climate crisis and environmental injustice. Refineries and petrochemical facilities that turn crude oil and natural gas into polymers to make plastic are concentrated in poor communities and communities of color, like along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast, where residents face elevated threats of cancer and respiratory diseases.

“These are toxic chemicals they use,” John Beard Jr., a resident of Port Arthur, Texas, and founder of the Port Arthur Community Action Network, told Truthout. “We’re poisoning ourselves with more and more pollution. This has to stop.”

The proliferation of microplastics across the world is so widespread that some scientists claim we’re living in a new historical epoch: the Plasticene.

“Microplastics are worth being concerned about, not just because our bodies are now containing plastic, but because that plastic contains a number of chemical additives, many of which we know to be toxic to human health,” said Melissa Valliant, communications director of Beyond Plastics, a nonprofit group working to reducing plastic pollution.

Numerous studies have raised alarm over dangers to public health associated with plastics production. A 2019 report by the Center for Environmental Law extensively documented the ways that harmful toxins, chemicals and waste tied to numerous diseases, including cancer, pervade the entire production chain and life cycle. A recent study found endocrine-disrupting chemicals in plastics “pose a serious threat to public health” and “cost the U.S. an estimated $250 billion in increased health care costs in 2018.”

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