Paying with plastic: How microplastics are changing our world
The term was coined 20 years ago, but the tiny flakes have been around for much longer. Are they in your salt and sugar? Can you minimise exposure? Take a look.
They are, quite simply, everywhere.

There are microplastics in our sugar and salt (in every Indian brand tested, a study found in August).
They are in the clouds, on standing crops, in the air, water and soil.
The tiny granules have been detected in human blood, lungs, semen, and in the placenta meant to shield an unborn child.
Microplastics are technically any bits of plastic debris less than 5 mm in length or diameter (that’s about double the size of a grain of sugar).
They were first categorised as a pollutant 20 years ago, by marine biologist Richard Thompson, who noticed such fragments in the debris washing up on the shores of the remote Isle of Man. (Click hereto see Thompson talk about his discovery, and his journey since).
“There were bits that were too small to see, but it was pretty obvious that the big bits were becoming small bits and then smaller bits,” says Thompson, who now heads the University of Plymouth’s International Marine Litter Research Unit.
He coined the term and began talking about how these pollutants could wreak havoc on marine life, and end up in the food chain.
He was right, of course. The study conducted recently in India, by the environmental research organisation Toxics Link, found between 6 and 89 pieces per kg of salt and sugar, in the form of fibre, pellets, films and fragments. (Other studies in other countries have come away with similar strike rates.)
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So how did they get everywhere?
Before Thompson’s research, while it was known that plastics do not decompose, no research was focused on how they “shed” as they degrade.

Exposure to friction, ultraviolet light, heat or pressure can cause infinitesimal fragments to break off and drift away.
The synthetic fibres that reinforce rubber tyres flake away in this manner, and contribute significantly to the microplastics in the air, and in our lungs. So do the fibres from artificial turf. Similarly, flakes break free from synthetic clothing, packaging, glitter, disposable plates, cups and sporks.
Fishing ropes and nets release bits directly into water bodies.
We even manufactured microplastics, for a while. For years, until countries began to ban them in 2015, microbeads were added to cosmetics, detergents and a range of other chemical mixes, for better results. These washed directly into rivers and oceans.
Once one starts to pay attention, it’s no longer surprising that the fragments are everywhere.
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While the term was coined 20 years ago, microplastics have been around for the better part of a century.
In the US, they have been found in lake sediment dated to 1940. Volumes rose as plastic production picked up in the 1950s. Tyre dust containing these particles has been found in ice cores dating to the 1960s.
We can assume they have been collecting up since soon after the first fully synthetic plastic, Bakelite, was created by the Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland in 1907.
He combined the fossil-fuel derivatives phenol and formaldehyde to produce a hard, mouldable substance that would change the course of manufacturing.
Polyethylene, the most commonly used plastic, followed in 1933. Polystrene in 1937.
We’ve been using nylon in toothbrushes since 1938 (before then, the bristles were usually made of animal hair).
By the 1940s, the versatile, durable material was in planes, personal accessories, tools and equipment; it was even used in components of the atom bomb.
As Thompson puts it, the world was elated because the material could make things that lasted forever. But then it became so cheap to produce, that the things became “disposable”.
And having never produced something this non-biodegradable, we had made no plans in place for what would happen next.
We treated plastic as if it was paper, when what we should have been doing is treating it like we were learning to treat toxic chemicals and industrial effluents.
We should have been asking “Where can we safely put this now?” and “How much of it do we really need?” Instead, we revelled in how easy it made things, and continued to produce more.
Global production has risen from 2 million tonnes a year in 1950 to over 450 million tonnes a year today. More than half the plastic ever produced has been made since the year 2000.
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“We live in a sea of these fragments, from which there is no escape, and the possible consequences on our health remain unclear,” says Mark Patrick Taylor, chief environmental scientist at Australia’s Environment Protection Authority Victoria.
Data on how much is out there is now being gathered, but this isn’t easy to do.
The smallest class of microplastics, nanoplastics, can only be detected under a microscope. With an average width of 1 to 1,000 nanometres (a single hair is about 80,000 nanometres wide), they are potentially more penetrative and more hazardous.
“Because they come in a variety of compositions, there is no standard way of testing for microplastics either,” says Suresh Valiyaveettil, a professor of chemistry at the National University of Singapore, who studies the synthesis, characterisation and applications of functional polymers.
“The usual detection mechanisms we have for materials depend on electron density or light absorption. But most plastics don’t have a strong absorption capacity or high electron density. So existing methods have to be modified and detection methods have to be tailor-made to suit a specific sample.”
Meanwhile, research indicates that microplastics in the human body likely raise the risk of cancers, metabolic disorders, antibiotic and insulin resistance, and reproductive issues. They may help pathogens travel further and make their way through the body more successfully.
“It is a nightmare of a situation,” Valiyaveettil says, “but nobody is treating it as a nightmare because there isn’t enough evidence yet to connect it with human health risks.”
Instead, petrochemical companies are expanding their plastics portfolios in response to projected declines in demand for fossil fuels.
Thompson says he believes the sense of urgency would be greater if there was clear evidence of the effects on human health. But the priority right now should be simple, he adds: “Find ways to turn off the tap.”
