Our world is getting polluted with plastics on a planetary scale. We can’t see much of it, but we’re starting to feel it. And it’s getting worse.
The plastic bottle tossed by the roadside and the endless trash heaps in third-world countries are just the beginning. As the trash ages, it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, until it can’t be seen with the naked eye anymore. At that point, however, the problems have barely begun.
These tiny pieces of plastic, called microplastics, have permeated everything, scientists have found in recent years. They can be as large as 5 millimeters and as small as 100 microns—about as thin as a human hair—or even smaller, at which point they’re sometimes referred to as nanoplastics….