Why Aren’t We Losing Our Minds over the Plastic in Our Brains?
New research on microplastics in brains reminds us that while scientists compile safety data, our leaders should still act.
February 14, 2025
Scientific American
Our brains are full of plastic.
This was the fun news I read earlier this week while picking up dinner take-out, packed in plastic containers, crammed in a plastic bag and accompanied by Styrofoam cups. Great, I thought, convenience culture is killing us.
But is it? This is the problem with the slew of research finding microscopic shards of plastic in our arteries, kidneys and livers, the findings that our oceans, food, soil and air are teeming with tiny bits of Tupperware. Scientists still don’t know what this plastic is doing to us. And [sic] because research takes time, while scientists are trying to answer question, we just keep inhaling, eating and drinking tiny pieces of plastic.
Why? Regulatory action has never really stopped the U.S. plastics industry from cranking out more plastic, even as clean air and water advocates try to fight the industry’s pollution problems in court and locals wage grassroots wars to slow the permitting of more plants that spew all those toxic chemicals. And [sic] now, back in office, is a president beholden to fossil fuel interests (where petroleum and natural gas are plastics precursors), a leader who uses his new powers to demand the use of plastic straws, and an administration that is hell-bent on crippling EPA’s mission to keep us safe rather than empowering it.
Meanwhile, we do not know what all this plastic is doing to us. And [sic] no one currently in charge seems to care.
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