Microplastics: Let’s get Real
March 21, 2024
Your slap in the face about eating plastic for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Make peace with the plastic you cannot control.
It’s time you and I have a serious talk. You know, lately you’ve been running around, buying into internet fear mongering, and I just want to let you know that we all see it, and it’s not cute. You’re gonna run yourself into the ground, dude. This is your intervention. Recovery starts today.
They’re not new, and they’re not avoidable. You need to understand that.
Microplastics- health and wellness tiktok’s new favorite buzzword. Listen, I don’t blame any of you for being receptive to the microplastic fear mongering. Because at the end of the day, microplastics ARE going to fuck us up in some way, shape, or form. But what I need you to understand is how they work, how they get there, and how much of it is already in your body.
Spoiler: It’s not going to make a difference if you ditch your plastic cutting board… sorry. :(
Not to be extreme, but the best way to break this down for you all is harkening back to a comparative situation to create a nice little allegory. Y’all remember the red scare??? Where everyone thought EVERYONE was a communist but no one knew where any of the real communists were because of this extremely unfounded avoidance culture that was created? That’s where we’re at with microplastics. We all think that they’re coming from all of the wrong places because of all of this ridiculous social media misinformation, and we as a collective don’t know where the real sources of microplastics are because we live in a culture of fear.
I’m here to dispel that. You cannot be afraid of things you cannot change.
The American Chemical Society describes microplastics as ubiquitous. (Cox, et. al.) When something is ubiquitous, it means it is found absolutely everywhere. According to Miriam Webster, the closest synonym to the word is omnipresent. I’m hoping that this quick vocabulary lesson serves as a primer.
THINGS THAT ARE UBIQUITOUS ARE NOT ABLE TO BE AVOIDED.
As I sit here leafing through journal after journal writing this piece for you all, I see a huge consistency that’s gonna have all you microplastic freaks checking yourself in somewhere.
The main way we consume microplastics is… drumroll please… INHALATION.
Can’t avoid breathing, now, can you? You may be asking yourself what difference that makes, considering you may as well not want to put additional microplastics into your body. But the kicker is the sheer amount of microplastics you are inhaling on a daily basis.
A study conducted in 2019 assessed just how many microplastics you inhale by using a Breathing Thermal Manikin, which is essentially like a car crash dummy that can breathe, which is… spooky.
Anyway, all treatments were found to have microplastics in them, somewhere between 1.7 and 16.2 parts per million-3. This was just from breathing. In a room. With no specific conditions. I’m not going to babble on about the methods of the study, because the point of this blog is to AVOID scientific jargon and craziness, but this study is public, so read it here if you so wish!
SIDE NOTE: If any journal article I ever reference is public forum, I’ll be sure to link it. :) Paywalls suck.
What is important is the breakdown of the microplastics that were inhaled. Of the synthetic materials found to be inhaled, polyester composed 81%, polyethylene 5%, and nylon 3%. The non synthetic particulate matter was composed of cellulose and protein.
Let it be known that although cellulose is an organic molecule found in our bodies, cellulose acetate is a commonly used plastic worldwide. It’s safe for the environment because it degrades really quickly. But, it doesn’t disappear.
Cellulose microplastics are in the air you breathe, the water you drink, and in the food you eat (because plants uptake it from the soil).
Microplastics are formed from your plastic cutting board, sure. But the point of this article is to allow you to view microplastics on a grand scale- and that is that they are perpetuated by the creation of plastics.
If you truly want to “solve” the issue of microplastics, you could theorize that putting your money where your mouth is and buying non plastic and reusable materials for your home, but the truth of the matter is, we as a society rely on plastics for industry. GLOBAL CHANGE RELIES ON THE BIG GUYS, NOT THE INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. (article to come, feeling like I may have to meditate for an hour before writing that one). Even if we were to stop using plastics entirely, bioaccumulation would take thousands of years for us to be microplastic free.
I don’t mean to leave you with a pit in your stomach, but rather with a sense of acceptance. You’re plastic, I’m plastic, my cat is plastic, I might give birth to a plastic baby someday, so may you. Don’t feed into internet fear mongering, just acknowledge that we may have screwed ourselves, but know that your grandkids will be more plastic than you. Be thankful that you’re not them.
Sinisterly and full of plastic,
Zoe For The Planet