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Plastics Destroying Our Health Faster Than We Knew
19 Sep 2025 9:40 am
From the article
"Microplastics are everywhere. They've invaded the darkest corners of our planet and of our bodies too.
More than 9 billion tons of plastic are estimated to have been produced between 1950 and 2017, with half of that total produced since 2004.
The vast majority of plastic ends up in the environment in one form or another, where it breaks down, through weathering, exposure to UV light and organisms of all kinds, into smaller and smaller pieces—microplastics and then nanoplastics.
These are "secondary" microplastics, because they start off big and end up small, but there's a whole class of "primary" microplastics which are small by design, like so-called "microbeads" used in cosmetics, and they're no less serious a problem. Within our homes, microplastics are mainly produced when synthetic fibres from clothes, furnishings and carpets are shed. They accumulate in large quantities in dust and float around in the air, which we then inhale"
"Microplastics are everywhere. They've invaded the darkest corners of our planet and of our bodies too.
More than 9 billion tons of plastic are estimated to have been produced between 1950 and 2017, with half of that total produced since 2004.
The vast majority of plastic ends up in the environment in one form or another, where it breaks down, through weathering, exposure to UV light and organisms of all kinds, into smaller and smaller pieces—microplastics and then nanoplastics.
These are "secondary" microplastics, because they start off big and end up small, but there's a whole class of "primary" microplastics which are small by design, like so-called "microbeads" used in cosmetics, and they're no less serious a problem. Within our homes, microplastics are mainly produced when synthetic fibres from clothes, furnishings and carpets are shed. They accumulate in large quantities in dust and float around in the air, which we then inhale"