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Plastics never decompose. They're designed with tightly bonded molecular chains to resist decomposition. They are one of very few types of solid matter on earth that pretty much hang around forever. So every piece of plastic ever manufactured is still here. By one estimate that's 9.5 billion tons since 1950. You may think they decompose when you see an old plastic grocery bag stuck in a tree until it eventually crumbles to the ground, but all it's done is break into smaller and smaller pieces until you can't even see them. They flow into our water supply and eventually end up in our rivers and oceans. Or worse. Our bodies.
Microplastics have been detected in human stool, lungs, and placentas. Mostly areas open to the external environment through various body cavities, but just last month cardiac surgeons reported finding microplastics in the human heart. That's a first. There's a link to the study in the Social Media Notes in my bio. The largest piece they found was 469 microns in diameter. To give you a reference, human hair is about 20-40 microns in diameter. How did that get there?! I have no idea, but they found them in the blood too as big as 184 microns. How is that not like a clot?? The implications of these findings for internal organs and human health, can't be good. And it makes me want to avoid plastics as much as possible.
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