I'm curious - has there been a place yet that hasn't found microplastics yet? Some of the places I have now read about seem so unlikely (archeological dig, deep bore holes, returning spacecraft) that I am now thinking of other plausible alternatives:<p>- some "microplastics" are naturally occurring phenomenon<p>- cannot run a test without the sample being compromised<p>- like the presence of carbon-14 in the atmosphere after the first atom bomb, it ubiquitous enough that there is no point testing for its presence
Try buying food that isn't stored in plastics, worse yet, the supply chain before you get the food probably uses plastics between the various components. Seems like such a hard problem to solve.
The very ubiquity of microplastics coupled with the lack of definitive harm is pretty strongly suggestive that they are pretty innocuous as far as chemicals go.
How did we fail to forsee the effects of plastic before unleashing it on humanity and the world? Is there some org or body that would prevent such thing from happening in future with other material? If we have not learn anything from this we are doomed to repeat it.
I am not sure if we will ever purge nature of them.<p>But we could reduce them going forward with better packaging science and use of biodegradable plastics.
I mean, it's enough to say "literally anywhere, including our blood and most tissues", because it doesn't get more disturbing than that