Actually I was reading the book "A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies" just last week.

I didn't realize the extent to which plastics have come to permeate and mess with our entire environment. It's not just about the polymer granules of the plastic, which is problematic by itself when during their breakdown they get small enough to make their way everywhere, including inside our organs, brains, etc.

It's about the ~thousands of exotic chemicals that get mixed into the plastics to tune them: plasticizers (to make them more flexible/durable), stabilizers (to help them resist heat, light), flame retardants, colorants, fillers, antioxidants, UV stabilizers, antistatic agents, lubricants, biocides, etc etc. These chemicals leach from the plastics over time (by default, but especially when you e.g. when you microwave your food). The vast majority of these chemicals have never been evaluated for safety.

There's many other fun facts in the book. We already knew "recycling" of plastic is basically fiction. It also turns out that e.g. when you see "biodegradable" on your plastic, that doesn't mean in normal natural conditions - they only degrade via specific processing plants that are equipped to degrade them.

Toxic, indestructible, synthetic molecules are mixing through the organic environments and the food chain and quite likely poisoning the environment and us.

It definitely feels like we've allowed the convenience of plastics to get way ahead of our understanding of their global effects and that there are some major unpriced externalities in the industry.

Source: x.com/karpathy/status/1826372336213524715