We live in a synthetic society. Our garments, suspended in closets and woven with a blend of nylon and polyester, are poisoning us.
Microplastics, comparable to a grain of sand, are less than five millimeters long and have been found in numerous human organs. The danger is that they never decompose; instead, they continuously break down into smaller fragments easily ingested by marine and terrestrial life, including humans.
The Origins of Synthetic Plastic
In 1907, Leo Baekland invented the first synthetic plastic material, which contained no materials naturally found in the environment. In the 1940s, an artificial silk called nylon was invented and used to make parachutes, clothing and ropes in World War II. After the war, the surge continued, and now plastics are everywhere.
Concern about plastics grew in the 1960s as plastic debris entered the ocean. Today, a garbage patch swirls in a gyre in the Northern Hemisphere, measuring twice the size of Texas.
From on-the-go coffee cups and food containers to clothing, plastic makes up nearly everything we hold or wear. Polymers can even be found in the makeup we dab onto our faces. Richard Thompson, a marine ecologist in the U.K., coined the term microplastics in 2004. However, he first identified them in 1993 when he was participating in a beach cleanup along the Isle of Man and noticed rainbow-colored particles littered throughout the sand.
Ingestion
Wind, waves and sunlight erode large plastic into microplastics, which animals consume. Humans can ingest microplastics through the food chain or water. Plastic can bioaccumulate and biomagnify within organisms, as mercury does in our fatty tissue. Bioaccumulation is when a substance builds up in an individual through time, whereas biomagnification is when said substance travels through the food chain, becoming more concentrated at various levels.
A study found that a plastic bottle contains more microplastics than tap water alone.
Wake Forest University’s drinking water comes from the Winston-Salem Forsyth County (WSFC) utilities. WSFC sources the water from Yadkin River and Salem Lake. In an email to the Old Gold & Black, Gale Ketteler, utilities public information officer, explained that there are no regulations to monitor microplastics.
“Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Utilities does not currently monitor for microplastics,” Ketteler said. “There is no enforceable contaminant level that we are regulated by at the state or federal level. Current research is working towards identifying potential risks and developing detection levels and treatment methods.”
Ketteler continued: “We have met federal and state drinking water standards for over 20 years. Other than for emergency use, bottled water is a marketing scam. You can save a lot of money by drinking tap water and filling your reusable bottle. $1.50 for a water bottle is approximately 2,000 gallons from your tap.”
Sarah Morath, a professor at Wake Forest School of Law, wrote the book, “Our Plastic Problem and How to Solve It.” This book deep dives into the environmental harm of plastics and possible solutions involving the government, nonprofits, businesses, and communities.
“That’s the scary thing about microplastics,” Morath said. “We know it’s there, but we don’t know what a safe level is, and there are no standards. So you can’t go to the water department and say, ‘How much microplastic should I have in my water?’ And they can’t tell us, whereas they can do that for things like lead and mercury and those kinds of heavy metals that we know are cancerous.”
What do we do now?
Although there are no state or federal regulations regarding microplastics, we can make conscious choices to limit our exposure to plastic. The World Health Organization recommends scientists continue to research microplastic’s persistence in the water cycle and further investigations into human health effects after chronic microplastic exposure.
“I’ve been thinking about micro and macroplastics and law and policy kinds of solutions,” Morath said, “although I think we have to think about solutions beyond the law, too, because we know we can influence individual behavior, and we know that business behavior also can have an influence.”