A Poison Like No Other
How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies
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5.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $29.99
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- $29.99
Publisher Description
“Informed, utterly blindsiding account.” - Booklist, starred review
It’s falling from the sky and in the air we breathe. 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, 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.
Unlike other pollutants that are single elements or simple chemical compounds, 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 new dimension of the plastic crisis, following the intrepid scientists who travel to the ends of the earth and the bottom of the ocean to understand the consequences of our dependence on plastic. 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.
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Journalist Simon (Plight of the Living Dead) reveals in this alarming study how microplastics have invaded Earth's ecosystems and the human body. The tiny particles of eroding plastic originate in such ubiquitous objects as cars, clothes, and product packaging, and can be found everywhere "from the depths of the Mariana Trench to the tippy top of Mount Everest and every place in between." Simon explains the process of plastic erosion, noting, for instance, that a single load of laundry flushes "between 91,000 and 138,000 microfibers" into wastewater treatment facilities, and how container ships shed microplastics into the ocean that contaminate seafood intended for human consumption. A major health concern, Simon writes, stems from the from endocrine-disrupting chemicals found in plastics that "make hormones go haywire, even in low concentrations." Simon offers some solid solutions such as microfiber filters on washing machines, the use of more sustainable materials in clothing manufacturing, and in general reducing society's dependence on plastic (after all, he notes, "the microplastic crisis is the macroplastic crisis"). This is a lucid, distressing look at a growing environmental concern.
Customer Reviews
$F6628293
07/27/1998
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