We keep hearing the word “microplastic” in our foods, seas, and ground, but if they do not react with most chemicals, why are they a problem in our bodies? Wouldn’t they just ignore them?
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*Mostly* chemically inert is not the same as *entirely* chemically inert.
Consider radioactivity. Which isotope do you think is more dangerous, uranium-239 with a half life of ~24 minutes, or uranium-238 with a half life of ~4.5 billion years? You might initially think the U239 is more dangerous because it’s much more unstable, more radioactive. It will give you a much much higher dose of harmful radiation in a few minutes!
However, that high instability also means that it becomes safe very quickly (ignoring the products that it breaks down into, which I have not bothered to look up – the point of the analogy is that the U239 is gone). The U238 will poison you more slowly, sure, but it also sticks around *forever*.
Similarly, most plastics most of the time are pretty stable and don’t react to much. But that means they don’t break down quickly. They stick around, and your body has no way to get rid of it *because* it’s so stable. However, some of it still does break down and those products may be harmful. One trend seems to be plastics that mimic hormones (particularly estrogen) in our bodies, which can really throw off how we function.
Since our bodies can’t get rid of the plastics, because they’re too stable, they stay in our bodies and break down slowly.
This is also true of plastics in the environment. They don’t break down so they just accumulate, causing all sorts of problems. Some of them aren’t chemical reactions, they’re just like, fish eating plastic and starving to death because they can’t digest the plastic. Or, organisms colonizing on floating plastic and building populations much higher than the environment can sustain.
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