Microplastics are making the news. This program opens with a clip from Auckland, New Zealand, broadcast on December 15, 2022. Research published in the Environmental Science & Technology journal shows that 74 tons of microplastics fell from the air on Auckland in 2020.
Almost all plastics in use today are so called “petrochemicals,” products made from fossil fuels like oil, coal, and gas. This industry is booming and plastics are showing up not just in manufacturing, construction and road building, but in our personal environment, our homes, households, clothes, furniture, and the food distribution systems we depend on.
The very thing that makes plastic so useful – its toughness – means it never really goes away. It just gets smaller and smaller: eventually small enough to enter the atmosphere and be inhaled, or be absorbed by food crops that are watered with sewage sludge. We are already exploring the spread of microplastics in the oceans.
Included in this program are excerpts from Plastic Talks - hosted by Erica Cirino, the Communications Manager of the Plastic Pollution Coalition. She is speaking with Matt Simon, Science writer for Wired Magazine and author of A Poison Like No Other. How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies.
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