It may be star­tling for some to com­pre­hend that hu­mans are now in­fil­trat­ed with plas­tic.

I am not ad­dress­ing those who had a cataract re­place­ment lens or even a plas­tic heart valve.

Sci­en­tists have found mi­croplas­tics em­bed­ded in the hu­man pla­cen­ta and the blood, heart, liv­er and bow­els of hu­mans.

Since 2004, Richard Thomp­son, who coined the term ‘mi­croplas­tics’ in his land­mark pa­per ‘Lost at Sea: Where Is All the Plas­tic?’, high­light­ed find­ing piles of rice-sized plas­tic bits above the tide­line on an Eng­lish beach. He raised con­cerns about plas­tics af­fect­ing tur­tles, birds, en­ter­ing mol­lusks, and the food web.

Well, re­gret­tably, plas­tics have found their way in­to our bod­ies and it’s not just via oral con­sump­tion, it seems we may be in­hal­ing plas­tic dust.

Plas­tic has pen­e­trat­ed our lives deeply. From our tooth­brush­es, med­ical sy­ringes, mo­bile phones, car parts, kitchen­ware, ba­by bot­tles, PVC pipes, and food pack­ag­ing. Mi­croplas­tics were found on the floor of the Mar­i­ana Trench to the sum­mit of Mount Ever­est, it’s ubiq­ui­tous.

While Fred­er­ick Vom Saal pub­lished about the car­cino­genic and dis­rupt­ing hor­mon­al ef­fects of cer­tain plas­tics like ph­tha­lates, BPA, and PCBs, we now have con­cerns that mi­croplas­tics could be mak­ing us more vul­ner­a­ble to heart dis­ease (a pub­li­ca­tion by Raf­faele Mar­fel­la on March 6, 2024), kid­ney dis­ease, and Alzheimer’s dis­ease, as well as af­fect­ing fer­til­i­ty.

In one re­cent study, mi­croplas­tics were found in every sin­gle one of 62 pla­cen­tas stud­ied.

Sci­en­tist Patrice Nan­cy men­tions, “this may harm the del­i­cate re­sponse of dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion be­tween self and non-self with a se­ries of re­lat­ed con­se­quences on em­bryo de­vel­op­ment that need to be de­fined”.

In­side tis­sues, mi­croplas­tics are con­sid­ered for­eign bod­ies and can trig­ger lo­cal im­mune re­spons­es. They can al­so act as car­ri­ers for oth­er tox­ic chem­i­cals, such as en­vi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tants and plas­tic ad­di­tives.

While our coun­try is now fo­cus­ing on the un­for­tu­nate neona­tal deaths caused by in­fec­tious mi­croor­gan­isms, we al­so need to be aware of the hid­den dan­ger of mi­croplas­tic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in­fil­trat­ing our in­fants and pop­u­la­tion.

Plas­tic was first man­u­fac­tured us­ing petro­chem­i­cals in 1907.

Na­ture does not know how to break down this syn­thet­ic ma­te­r­i­al. As plas­tic be­comes more brit­tle, it dis­in­te­grates in mi­croplas­tic par­ti­cles.

Plas­tic is not biodegrad­able, so in re­al­i­ty, most plas­tic does not ever dis­ap­pear but be­comes long-last­ing “plas­tic dust”.

When items like plas­tic bags break down, they re­lease tox­ins that con­t­a­m­i­nate the soil and wa­ter.

No one would have thought this ‘won­der­ful’ in­ven­tion, which made mod­ern life and busi­ness so much more con­ve­nient, could now be caus­ing ma­jor con­cerns.

In 1950, the world pro­duced two mil­lion met­ric tons of plas­tic. In 2019, that num­ber in­creased to 460 mil­lion tons; this fig­ure is in­creas­ing and so will ac­cu­mu­la­tion in our bod­ies.

Re­searcher Lukas Ken­ner found that peo­ple could in­hale up to 272 pieces of mi­croplas­tic in 24 hours.

Re­searchers at the UK’s Uni­ver­si­ty of Ply­mouth in Scot­land test­ed air in a typ­i­cal home and con­clud­ed that, “peo­ple will take in more plas­tic by in­hal­ing or in­gest­ing tiny, in­vis­i­ble plas­tic fi­bres float­ing in the air around them— fi­bres shed by their clothes, car­pets, and up­hol­stery—than they will by eat­ing mus­sels”.

Mu­cus can form around some in­haled par­ti­cles, as­sist­ing in ex­pelling them from our lungs. Im­mune cells sur­round those that re­main, to iso­late them. Over time, re­main­ing par­ti­cles could cause ir­ri­ta­tion that can lead to in­flam­ma­tion or can­cer (as as­bestos did), or they could re­main an in­ert pres­ence and do no harm.

With the in­creas­ing va­ri­ety of mi­croplas­tics, we have yet to see the full pic­ture. Most food is stored and packed in plas­tic, and most FM­CG prod­ucts are packed in plas­tic.

Since 2008, sev­er­al gov­ern­ments have ad­vised against the use of poly­car­bon­ate in wet food pack­ag­ing. Sev­er­al coun­tries have al­so banned the use of poly­car­bon­ate in ba­by bot­tles. We are al­so cau­tioned to avoid mi­crowav­ing plas­ticware.

PCBs, the chem­i­cal coolants that were banned in the Unit­ed States in 1979, are still found in the food chain.

BPA and ph­tha­lates, used to make plas­tics more pli­able, have been found to leach out of con­tain­ers and mix with their con­tents.

A few years ago, we had a big fan­fare of mak­ing peo­ple pay for thin plas­tic bags and en­cour­ag­ing re­cy­cling of stronger bags while shop­ping for gro­ceries. Re­gret­tably, this has failed to be main­tained. Even bins for gath­er­ing plas­tics are not oft seen.

We need re­minders of the dan­gers.

Ku­dos to Plan­ning Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les who, on Earth Day cel­e­bra­tions on April 22, re­mind­ed us of this plas­tic men­ace as she ad­dressed Earth Day cel­e­bra­tions at UWI, St Au­gus­tine.

Earth Day’s theme this year was Plan­et ver­sus Plas­tics. Beck­les said the Gov­ern­ment alone can­not deal with this prob­lem, “It is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of every cit­i­zen.”

We need to heed her call.