A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies

Summary

It's in our food, our clothes, and our homes. It's microplastic and it's everywhere—including our own bodies. Scientists are just beginning to discover how these tiny particles threaten health, but the studies are alarming.

In A Poison Like No Other, Matt Simon reveals a whole new dimension to the plastic crisis. 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.

Unlike other pollutants, microplastics represent a cocktail of toxicity: plastics contain at least 10,000 different chemicals. Those chemicals are linked to diseases from diabetes to hormone disruption to cancers.

A Poison Like No Other is the first book to fully explore this public health threat. As Simon learns from these researchers, there is no easy fix. But we will never curb our plastic addiction until we begin to recognize the invisible particles all around us.