The plastic within us

Humanity may soon face an existential crisis, and we are deluded if we believe a free market will save us.
Here’s the problem: Our brains are increasingly being filled with plastic. According to a study released in February in the journal Nature, scientists examined the brains of dozens of deceased humans and found an average of seven grams of plastic (the equivalent of an entire plastic spoon) in each. Tiny particles of plastic, referred to as either microplastics or nanoplastics depending on the size of the particles, enter our bodies mostly through the food and water we consume daily. The particles are small enough that they enter our blood stream and slowly accumulate in different parts of our bodies, but especially in our brains.
That’s frightening enough, but the truly scary finding in this latest study is that the amount of plastic in our brains has increased sharply over just the past several years, and there is no reason to believe that trajectory will reverse itself any time soon. The question is, how many spoons worth of plastics will our brains tolerate before they stop working?
The answer to that is unknown, although researchers increasingly fear there’s a connection between the increasing amount of plastic in our brains and rising rates of dementia. Less clear is the extent to which the levels of plastic in our brains today may already be manifesting more subtle changes in our cognition.
It is not just humans who are affected, of course. All living organisms on the planet, from soil invertebrates on land to whales in the farthest reaches of the Arctic Ocean, are experiencing rising levels of plastics in their bodies.
We are, undeniably, engaging in an uncontrolled experiment on the ability of all living things on Earth to sustain themselves and the food webs with which they are a part, as their organs increasingly fill with a toxic material that our bodies are ill-equipped to expel. Humans, of course, have been used in research experiments for a long time. Yet, while there have been a few notable and grossly immoral exceptions over the years, human participation in experiments has in more recent times been mostly voluntary. But when it comes to the impact of the growing amount of plastics in our bodies, we are test subjects against our will.
There is no question that humans are remarkably clever, but it is equally clear that Western society, which has largely set the terms of the global economy, exhibits astonishingly little wisdom about the long-term consequences of the decisions supposedly guided by the invisible hand of a “free market.”
Because plastics have become so ubiquitous in our daily lives, we can easily fall prey to the propaganda that suggests the rise of plastics is the result of conscious choice, rather than a decision made largely by the corporations that profit from spreading plastic bits to every last corner of the planet, including our own bodies. These are companies that make money — lots of money— from the manufacture of a myriad of plastic polymers and the items molded from them, and in a society where money equals political influence such companies can forestall the kind of sensible regulatory response that our current circumstances demand.
Consider the prospect of a ban on one-time-use plastic bags or similar plastic packaging, the kind we see at every retail outlet. Politicians are fearful of such bans because they know the plastics industry will use their money to undermine those who propose such regulations as “anti-choice.” Yet what if those who fall for such corporate propaganda are contributing to a decline in public health, a claim for which strong evidence now exists? At some point, the evidence breaks through and the public recognizes the need for regulation. After all, who really wants to go back to allowing smoking on airplanes, for example? The idea that we used to allow a handful of individuals to contaminate the air for unwilling passengers now seems astonishing.
Any such regulatory response always draws pushback from those who profit from the lack of regulation, but once in place, new regulations invariably prompt far less of a burden than opponents suggest, particularly when there are easy alternatives. Many other countries, and even a few U.S. states and municipalities, have enacted bans on one-time-use plastic bags. And guess what? Within a few weeks everyone remembers to bring re-usable shopping bags when they go shopping and life goes on. The retailers even save money. It’s only the plastic industry that suffers. Like the cigarette companies, they’ll need to find other products to make, hopefully ones less destructive of human health. But why should humanity risk our future just so plastic manufacturers can continue to profit? It’s time our political leaders stick up for our future, before we no longer have one.