The Microplastic Panic: Letter to a Wonderful Teacher at My Kid’s School
A teacher at my kids school was giving a presentation on a general topic and as an aside mentioned a high level of concern about how microplastics were in us and everywhere. She was in such despair that I wrote her an email to alleviate her panic This is that email.
This has nothing to do with any official school business. I am writing because during the presentation the other morning, you said, as an aside, something to the effect that there were microplastics in us and all over and that it’s already too late. You are a lovely person and it upsets me for you to go around thinking that bad things are in your body. As you know, my company, Buoy, uses Oceanbound plastic collected from South Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Haiti to make the Buoy water bottles and all of our reuse containers. Being in the plastics collection, recycling and reuse area, I keep up with the literature and all the noise around microplastics and for your own mental peace, I want you to know that it is not what they say it is.
The panic-verse is very intent on people thinking that the world is ending and everyone is getting cancer from some new insidious source. The fear created is very profitable. NGOs get tons of donations out of it and the wellness industry sells tons of products as a result of general health panic. Plastics, contrary to what you hear, are quite inert. When they say that plastics are toxic and also say that you have a credit card worth of plastics in your body, it is clear that both of those things cannot be true at the same time or you would be dead. In fact, neither of those things seem to be true.
Lots of scientists are doing lots of work and the picture is getting clearer, but as far as plastic in the body, what seems to be happening is that, 1. lab dust is contaminating samples (See footnote 1 below) and 2. They are detecting lipids instead of plastic. The study that broke the internet about plastic in the brain (see footnote 2 below), found ten times more plastic in the brain than in the liver. The very first comment on that article respectfully pointed out that the methods used often conflated lipids and plastics and also pointed out that the brain has around ten times more lipids than the liver. Seems highly likely that they just found lipids. Lastly, a nerdy look at the lab technique used, Pyrolysis-Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry, concluded that it was not a good technique for finding microplastics due to interference and results that were too close to the limits of detection. This article also contains a fascinating review of the various pathways by which the body eliminates nano-sized particles. Plastics are a tiny portion of the particles we breathe in and eat. The body has this down. (See Footnote 3 below.)
A team of German scientists have followed up to determine the toxicity of microplastics in the brain and they determined that there is no toxicological evidence of health risks from ingesting microplastics in food, mainly because plastics are inert and also because the body does such a good job of eliminating things. (See footnote 4 below.)
While I’m at it, the plastic gyres in the ocean are often attributed to plastic-choked rivers in underdeveloped countries flowing out, but when the waste in these gyres was studied, its origins were not underdeveloped countries, but rather fishing nations. What is happening is that large ships fishing out at sea are dumping their waste. The main component and most concerning component of plastic in the ocean is abandoned nets and lines, which trap and kill fish and other animals. (See Footnote 5 below,)
The waste from rivers and streams going into the ocean won’t sail out into the ocean, but drop pretty quickly to the seabed within a few miles of shore. Is this great? No. That’s why Buoy contributes to the setup of waste collection in South Mexico, the Dominical Republic and Haiti by buying Oceanbound plastic. This is a boring but effective way to prevent plastics from littering the bottom of our shorelines.
There is so much, but finally, plastic does degrade in nature. When you google, you will mostly find the statements about plastic lasting for centuries. This isn’t really the case. Here is an article on Olefin films (HDPE, which Buoy uses, and PP are olefins). They degrade within a year in oxidative conditions (exposure to oxygen, water, and light). (See footnote 6 below.)
I would love to do a simple presentation to classes about what plastics are, what parts of plastic people are afraid of and how to responsibly manage plastics as a resource. I don’t really touch on the above so much, but still do dispel some of the fear with some facts and chemical structures. I have given this presentation to 5th grade classes before, so it’s very accessible. Please see attached and let’s definitely talk about this as a point of education.
1. Regarding humans, microplastics were detected in samples of stool [105, 106], saliva [107], sputum [108], bronchoalveolar lavage fluid [86], blood [109] and tissue samples from the lung [110, 111], placenta [112, 113], digestive tract [114] liver, spleen, and kidney [115]. However, the particle sizes found in the respective studies are too large to be able to cross biological barriers [96], and therefore sample contamination from the laboratory environment cannot be excluded.”
C. Laforsch et al., Environmental Fate and Effects of Microplastics on Organisms, Springer Handbook of Circular Plastics Economy, Springer NY, p. 797, 2025
3. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.4c12599
4. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-16529-0
6. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0141391010004581
