We Need to Talk About Microplastics

A book club like no other

A little cloud follows you constantly as you go about your day. It doesn’t represent melancholy or unfulfilled dreams or the chaos of the world. Rather, this physical cloud contains microplastics floating in the air—little bits of plastic that measure five millimeters or smaller.

The microplastics in your little cloud have shed from plastic materials that surround you—mattresses and polyester bedding, synthetic clothing and running shoes, plastic food packaging and trash bin liners. Walk across the carpet of your living room and you kick up microplastics. Plop onto the couch after a long day at work and catapult them into the air. Rip open a bag of chips and send microplastics flying.

We inhale bits of our little cloud as we breathe. We ingest cloud particles that settle onto our food and drinks (in addition to the microplastics present in food and water). Microplastics have infiltrated human brains, blood, organs, breast milk and semen, with researchers just beginning to understand the health threats. We can’t avoid microplastics altogether but we can reduce our exposure to them. (Go here for a list of strategies.)

Over the years, I’ve thought about starting a book club but never chose a book or made a plan. After reading A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies by science journalist Matt Simon, I realized I had to organize a meeting immediately. From the synopsis of this important book:

In A Poison Like No Other, Matt Simon reveals a whole new dimension to the plastic crisis, one even more disturbing than plastic bottles washing up on shores and grocery bags dumped in landfills. Dealing with discarded plastic is bad enough, but when it starts to break down, the real trouble begins. The very thing that makes plastic so useful and ubiquitous—its toughness—means it never really goes away. It just gets smaller and smaller: eventually small enough to enter your lungs or be absorbed by crops or penetrate a fish’s muscle tissue before it becomes dinner.

To give people enough time to find a copy of the book and read it, our one-hour book club meeting will take place next month on Thursday, December 11th at 4pm PT/7pm ET. (At 169 pages, it’s a short read but not an easy one.) You can order a copy of the book from Bookshop here (that’s an affiliate link) but please consider borrowing it from your library. As you read, please jot down questions or observations to bring up with the group. Together, we’ll discuss the microplastic problem—and solutions.

This may be just a one-off book club. We’ll see. I have a list of other books we could read and discuss… Oh and it’s open to everyone. You don’t need to be a paid subscriber (or even a free subscriber). Please go here to register.