The Plastic Inside You

If you drink tap water, you’re probably drinking plastic fibers.

According to 10-month investigation conducted by journalists and scientists at Orb Media:

Microscopic plastic fibers are flowing out of taps from New York to New Delhi, according to exclusive research by Orb and a researcher at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. From the halls of the U.S. Capitol to the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda, women, children, men, and babies are consuming plastic with every glass of water.

The authors of “Invisibles: The Plastics Inside Us,” report that 83 percent of water samples collected across six continents contained plastic fibers. That means billions of people are drinking plastic-contaminated water.

From the report:

If plastic fibers are in your water, experts say they’re surely in your food as well—baby formula, pasta, soups, and sauces, whether from the kitchen or the grocery. Plastic fibers may leaven your pizza crust, and a forthcoming study says it’s likely in the craft beer you’ll drink to chase the pepperoni down.

It gets worse. Plastic is all but indestructible, meaning plastic waste doesn’t biodegrade; rather, it only breaks down into smaller pieces of itself, even down to particles in nanometer scale—one-one thousandth of one-one thousandth of a millimeter.

Microplastics have been shown to absorb toxic chemicals linked to cancer and other illnesses, and then release them when consumed by fish and mammals (that means you), says the report.

Read ‘Invisibles: The Plastics Inside Us’

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