Whether you’re a hot cup of tea and meditate kind of person or a toss the leftover pizza in the microwave kind of person, you probably ate plastic this morning.
Tiny plastic particles called microplastics easily find their way into the things we eat and drink — and there's little you can do to avoid them.
“In essence, a microplastic can be any plastic item that’s been broken down into small pieces,” said Jennifer Walling, executive director of the statewide lobbying group Illinois Environmental Council.
Most plastic products, Walling said, can’t be recycled. They interrupt municipal recycling programs and release chemicals and particles that find their way into fish and birds that humans eat. It’s in bottled water. Increasingly, it’s in tap water. It’s in the air we breathe. And it’s accumulating in our bodies. A recent Nature Medicine article found the equivalent of a spoonful of microplastics, on average, in the brain.
“These are definitely causing impacts, and we don’t know what they are yet,” Walling said.
Some researchers have linked microplastics to decreased organ function and a depressed immune system. Plastic exposure may lead to inflammation, which has been correlated with conditions such as Alzheimer’s Disease and cancer.
But according to Illinois State University biologist Bill Perry, there's one central challenge in studying the health impacts of plastic.
“We have no reference group,” Perry said.
Scientific studies often apply an intervention to a group to learn the impact of that intervention, compared to a control group.
“We can’t find any group of humans that hasn’t been exposed,” he said. “Even the people that live in northern Alaska, back when I was there in the ‘90s north of Atigun Pass — we were finding microplastics back then. We just didn’t realize the scale.”
Certain microplastics are so small they can cross into cells and enter the nucleus, where DNA is created.
“We don’t know how it’s crossing the blood-brain barrier,” Perry said. “It’s in the first stool sample from babies. It’s in the fluid around the eggs in your ovaries. Everywhere in our bodies, we have microplastics.”
Perry said Bloomington-Normal’s water supply is safe, but levels of plastic in the city and town's water is on the rise. Surface water in Lakes Bloomington and Evergreen, Bloomington’s fresh water sources, accumulate plastics pumped into the air by your clothes dryer, for example.
ISU graduate student Raven Hunt, supervised by Perry and Catherine O’Reilly, found microplastics were found in all 100 fish studied in the two lakes. Plastic is in the Mahomet Aquifer, which supplies water to Normal and much of Central Illinois. It’s in Sugar Creek.
“We did a study on the plastics entering the [Bloomington-Normal] Water Reclamation District, and what was leaving,” Perry said. “They do a great job removing the microplastics. The problem is, what do you do with the bacterial sludge that’s leftover? A lot of times, that’s planted in agricultural fields. You’re then moving the microplastics out of that system back into the environment.”
Up to legislators to regulate
While Perry believes in the power of individual action, organizations like the Illinois Environmental Council are trying to push legislation to regulate the plastics industry. Two bills phasing out foam food containers and single-use plastic shopping bags have recently passed through committee in the Illinois Senate.
“We shouldn’t have to deal with this situation where the convenient, cheap choice is something that is killing us,” Walling said. “I have a lot of compassion for folks that are making those cheaper choices. But we should be providing those choices that are good for your health.”
Walling said the state Senate bills, and three others curbing plastic production in Illinois proposed by the state House of Representatives, are far more popular among democrats. At the national level, President Trump has criticized and rolled back measures to conserve water and reduce plastic. The administration has cut grants to environmental programs and scientific research. But the head of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has expressed a strong desire to eliminate toxic chemicals from food.
Walling expects the statewide bills to take about five years to take effect. And Illinois' large oil and gas industry is likely to put up a fight.
“Like me, if you’re someone who is trying to reduce plastic that is in your life, you realize how difficult it is,” said Walling.
But anti-plastic advocates won before. In 2014, Illinois was the first state to ban microbeads in certain cosmetic products. The law prevents tiny plastic particles once present in exfoliating soaps and even toothpaste which, once washed down the bathroom drain, enters the water supply.
“Dentists were finding small microplastics in people’s gums,” Walling said.
Microbeads were phased out by 2019, but progress, Walling said, is slow — and plastic production continues trending upward.
According to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, plastic waste in the United States in 1960 was approximately 350,000 tons. In 2018, it was more than 35 million tons — and plastic grocery bags taken out of the store in the 1990s are likely still sitting intact in landfills.
“The scale is unreal,” said Perry, and the ultimate impact of all this plastic on our health remains a mystery.
Still, there are steps Perry and Walling say individuals can take to limit, if not totally prevent, exposure to plastic. Storing food in glass or metal containers helps, especially when food is hot. Avoid black plastic. Opt for compostable to-go containers and teabags. And whenever possible, they say, skip the single-use bottle of water.
