1/13/2026 Clean Technica EPA Cooks the Books on Industrial Pollution Costs – They (EPA) will henceforth consider only the economic cost of the regulations to corporations, and if they are deemed to be too burdensome, those regulations will be softened in order to avoid undue economic harm to the polluters. This includes fine particulates (2.5 microns or less) that include microplastics and fossil fuel combustion products….contributing to many negative health outcomes.

1/12/2026 Compound Interest What are rubber ducks made from? - Scientists discovered polyvinyl chloride, or PVC for short, accidentally in the 1800s on more than one occasion. A hard and brittle plastic, PVC had little commercial use until it was mixed with softening plasticizers to make a much more moldable material. The modern rubber duck is not made from rubber, but from plasticized PVC colored with a bright yellow pigment.

1/9/2026 Science Alert Study Finds Microplastics Are Widespread in Popular Seafoods - In the Pacific Northwest – a region of North America renowned for its seafood – researchers have found particles from our waste and pollution swimming in the edible tissue of just about every fish and shellfish they collected.

1/7/2026 The Conversation Surprising number of foods contain microplastics. Here’s how to reduce the amount you consume - While eliminating plastics entirely from our diets may be impossible, making these swaps should help to reduce your exposure.

1/4/2026 Washington Post What we learned about microplastics in 2025 - For many scientists, 2025 was the year of microplastics. It’s only in the past year or so that we have begun to understand that the tiny plastics — including some that are impossible to see with the naked eye — are in our bodies and food as well.

12/31/2025 ScienceDaily Microplastics are leaking invisible chemical clouds into water - Microplastics in rivers, lakes, and oceans aren’t just drifting debris—they’re constantly leaking invisible clouds of chemicals into the water. New research shows that sunlight drives this process, causing different plastics to release distinct and evolving mixtures of dissolved organic compounds as they weather. These chemical plumes are surprisingly complex, often richer and more biologically active than natural organic matter, and include additives, broken polymer fragments, and oxidized molecules. Understanding how these chemicals evolve across different stages of plastic breakdown will be essential for assessing their long-term environmental impact.

12/28/2025 SciTechDaily Microplastics Burrow into Blood Vessels and Fuel Heart Disease - New research led by biomedical scientists at the University of California, Riverside suggests that routine contact with microplastics — tiny particles released from packaging, clothing, and many plastic products — may speed up atherosclerosis, a condition in which arteries become clogged and can lead to heart attacks and strokes. The team studied LDLR-deficient mice, which are genetically prone to developing atherosclerosis. Both male and female mice were fed a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet comparable to what a lean and healthy person might consume. Over a nine-week period, the mice received daily doses of microplastics (10 milligrams per kilogram of body weight). These exposure levels were chosen to reflect amounts considered environmentally relevant and similar to what humans could encounter through contaminated food and water.

12/22/2025 ScienceDaily This fish-inspired filter removes over 99% of microplastics - Washing machines release massive amounts of microplastics into the environment, mostly from worn clothing fibers. Researchers have developed a new, fish-inspired filter that removes over 99% of these particles without clogging. The design mimics the funnel-shaped gill system used by filter-feeding fish, allowing fibers to roll away instead of blocking the filter. The low-cost, patent-pending solution could soon be built directly into future washing machines.

12/17/2025 Washington Post These kitchen items may be contaminating your food with chemicals - Plastic ushered in a new era of convenience and filled homes with cheap, disposable goods. But it also has exposed ordinary people to tens of thousands of chemicals that slip out of those items into household dust, food, water — and from there, into bodies. Some of these chemicals are known to disrupt pregnancies, triggering birth defects and fertility problems later in life; others have been linked to cancer and developmental problems. “The problem is, none of the plastics that we have right now are safe,” said Wagner, of Norwegian University of Science and Technology. “That’s not a very nice thing to hear, but that’s what the data tell us.”

12/8/2025 The Conversation PFAS in pregnant women’s drinking water puts their babies at higher risk – Data on all births in New Hampshire from 2010-2019 were analyzed. The 11.5 thousand births that occurred within 3.1 miles of a site known to be contaminated with PFAS and where mothers were served by public water system (well based) were selected for further analysis. PFAS was greater in the water system wells downstream from the site. Births in the area served by wells downstream were 43% more likely to be low-weigh (under 5.5 pounds), 20% greater chance of preterm birth, and 191% greater chance of the infant not surviving its first year. Research was done at University of Arizona.

12/7/2025 Clean Technica Your Single-Use Plastic Bottles Are Killing Endangered Sea Turtles - A recent study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes that plastic ingestion has been documented in nearly 1,300 marine species, including every seabird family, marine mammal family, and sea turtle species. Researchers analyzed data from more than 10,000 autopsies from marine creatures killed by ingesting plastic; they calculated amounts consistent with a 90% likelihood of death:

• 23 pieces (0.098 cm3/cm) in seabirds;

• 29 pieces (39.89 cm3/cm) in marine mammals: and,

• 405 pieces (5.52 cm3/cm) in sea turtles (377 for juveniles).

12/4/2025 American College of Emergency Physicians Opinion: Physicians Must Reduce Plastic Waste - Waste audits in the emergency departments (EDs) of Kent Hospital in Warwick, Rhode Island, and Mass General Hospital in Boston found that four pounds of waste is generated per patient, per encounter, and about 60 percent of the waste is plastic…. If we consider our plastic footprint with everything we are doing, we can adjust our habits to give our patients and our world healthier care.

12/2/2025 Washington Post ‘Everywhere chemicals’ are in our food, decades after scientists recognized dangers - A large body of science has linked phthalates to a variety of serious health conditions, including premature birth and infertility. The costs to society are huge. A 2024 NYU-led study that catalogued health effects from phthalates exposure in the United States — including contributions to diabetes levels and infertility — estimated that dealing with phthalate-related diseases cost $66.7 billion in a single year. Previous Washington Post article on phthalates from last September: The health risks from plastics almost nobody knows about.

12/2/2025 Science Daily Is your gut being poisoned? Scientists reveal the hidden impact of everyday chemicals - Many chemicals designed to act only on one type of target, say insects or fungi, also affect gut bacteria. Some of these chemicals had strong effects. For example, many industrial chemicals like flame retardants and plasticizers -- that we are regularly in contact with -- weren't thought to affect living organisms at all, but they do.

12/2025 Greenpeace Plastic Merchants of Myth: Circular Claims Fall - After decades of meager investments accompanied by misleading claims and a very well-funded industry public relations campaign aimed at persuading people that recycling can make plastic use sustainable, plastic recycling remains a failed enterprise that is economically and technically unviable and environmentally unjustifiable. (Press release for the document)

11/30/2025 NPR  More cities are seeing PFAS pollution in drinking water. Here's what Louisville found - What we do is manage risk, and we start that at the river. It sounds weird, but source water protection – keeping the stuff out of the river – is a big deal.

11/21/2025 Smithsonian Magazine More Than 1,200 Marine Animal Species Eat Plastic. Ingesting Even a Tiny Amount Can Kill Them - Data from more than 10,000 marine animal autopsies. About half of the examined sea turtles, one-third of seabirds and one in eight marine mammals had plastics in their stomachs. The study didn’t examine other ways plastics can hurt wildlife, such as strangulation, malnutrition or toxic effects. It also didn’t look at the harms of tinier pieces of plastics—microplastics—which have been found in the deep ocean and can also affect marine life. Researchers say the best way to protect wildlife from plastic is to reduce the amount of it that enters the ocean, namely through local and national policy. 

11/27/2025 CNN How extreme weather is making plastic pollution more mobile, more persistent and more hazardous - Rising temperatures, humidity and sunlight break plastic down, making it brittle and cracked, accelerating its disintegration into tiny fragments. A 10-degree Celsius (18 Fahrenheit) rise in temperature during an extreme heat wave could double the rate at which plastic degrades. Extreme storms, flooding and wind also hasten the breakdown of plastic, mobilize it and spread it more widely. Flooding can also help forge “plastic rocks,” created when rocks and plastics form a chemical bond and merge together. These become hotspots for microplastic generation. Wildfires release microplastics and highly toxic compounds into the atmosphere. Global annual production of plastic increased 200-fold between 1950 and 2023, and is predicted to keep increasing as the world moves toward clean energy and oil companies shift investments to plastics.

11/21/2025 I am Plastic Free 13 Non-Toxic, Plastic Free Electric Kettles for a Healthy Cup – A plastic free electric kettle is on my wish list for this year. It will be used a lot in my office.

11/19/2025 Consumer Reports Consumer Reports announces winners of its Microplastics Detection Challenge - Contest challenged participants to develop simple and inexpensive at-home tests to enable people to detect microplastics in their food. 

11/18/2025 Science Daily Everyday microplastics could be fueling heart disease - Microplastics—tiny particles now found in food, water, air, and even human tissues—may directly accelerate artery-clogging disease, and new research shows the danger may be far greater for males.

10/2025 Beyond Plastics REPORT: Follow the Money: The David vs. Goliath Battle to Pass the New York Packaging Reduction & Recycling Infrastructure Act (A1749, S1464) - This is more than a policy fight. It’s a fight for New Yorkers’ health, tax dollars, and environment. And with every lawmaker up for re-election in 2026, the battle is only heating up.

10/22/2025 Super Age Bottled Water is a Major Source of Microplastics - Nano- and microplastics have been linked in studies to inflammation, immune dysregulation, cardiac events, and metabolic disruptions. Though human data are still emerging, evidence also suggests a connection to respiratory disease, reproductive issues, and even neurotoxicity. 

10/28/2025 I am plastic free 6 Best Non-Toxic Lunch Boxes That Don’t Shed Microplastics – I am using my glass left-over containers….but I don’t need to carry my lunch every day!

10/14/2025 All about Vision How microplastics affect your eyes, and what you can do - Microplastics don't go away. They just get smaller and smaller over time. They can come from everyday things like bottles, tires, fabrics and personal care products. Studies have found microplastics on and even inside people's eyes.

10/13/2025 Washington Post Microplastics are everywhere. You can do one simple thing to avoid them. – Avoid heating plastic (in the microwave…by pouring hot drinks into it…washing synthetic fabrics in hot water…drying synthetic fabrics in high heat).

10/6/2020 Science Daily New research reveals what’s really hiding in bottled water - Each sip may contain invisible microplastics that can slip through the body’s defenses and lodge in vital organs. These tiny pollutants are linked to inflammation, hormonal disruption, and even neurological damage, yet remain dangerously understudied. “People need to understand that the issue is not acute toxicity -- it is chronic toxicity.”

10/9/2025 Yale Environment 360 An E.U. Plan to Slash Micropollutants in Wastewater Is Under Attack - Earlier this year, a European Union directive mandated advanced treatment of micropollutants in wastewater, with the cost to be borne by polluters. But the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries, which are responsible for most of those contaminants, are now pushing back.

9/26/2025 Yale Environment 360 Childhood Exposure to Plastic Raises Lifetime Health Risks - Scientists analyzed decades of research into the impact on pregnant mothers, fetuses, and children of three chemical additives — phthalates, bisphenols, and perfluoroalkyl substances — that make plastic more flexible, more rigid, or more resistant to heat or water. Early exposure to these chemicals can leave children at greater risk of heart disease, obesity, infertility, and asthma well into adolescence and adulthood. Plastic additives are also believed to affect the development of the brain, with studies linking the chemicals to lower IQ, ADHD, and autism. The widespread use of plastic is exacting a deepening toll, with Americans paying an estimated $250 billion yearly to treat ailments linked to plastic.

9/22/2025 BBC Your kitchen is full of microplastics. Here's how to eat less of them – Now that I am aware of the microplastic issues…there seem to be a lot of articles on the topic. I liked this one because it pointed to some real research and there were actions one could take to reduce microplastic exposure.

9/15/2025 NIH National Library of Medicine Microplastics in Drinking Water: A Review of Sources, Removal, Detection, Occurrence, and Potential Risks - Microplastics in drinking water systems exhibit multi-source input characteristics, originating from environmental infiltration into water sources; leaching from materials in water distribution systems; migration from bottled water packaging interfaces; and re-release during water treatment processes. The potential hazards of MPs remain a critical concern. Future work needs to integrate research from environmental science, toxicology, and public health to clarify the dose–effect relationships of MPs, improve risk assessment systems, and promote technological innovation and policy regulation to effectively ensure drinking water safety and public health.

8/28/2025 The Guardian Humans inhale as much as 68,000 microplastic particles daily - Every breath people take in their homes or car probably contains significant amounts of microplastics small enough to burrow deep into lungs. The smaller bits measure between 1 and 10 micrometers and present more of a health threat because they can more easily be distributed throughout the body. The concentrations indoors are higher because it is an enclosed environment with high levels of plastic in a small area, and there is generally poor ventilation. The concentration of plastic in the cars’ air was about four times higher than in homes. Researchers matched the microplastic material with that used on the dashboard, door handle, steering wheel and other components. (Makes the case for replacing plastic in home furnishings and air purifiers that remove small particles…the car is more challenging.)

8/23/2025 Clean Technica Two-Thirds of River Trash Is Plastic - Recent research conducted at the University of California–Santa Barbara found that rivers have far too much plastic in them. 1.95 million metric tons of plastic — the weight of 5.3 Empire State buildings — travels down rivers worldwide every year. It comes from littering, illegal dumping, leakage from landfills…and is mobilized across landscapes, through urban drainages, and into waterways by wind and rains. And it isn’t harmless. Microplastic in rivers accumulates in food sources, and direct exposure via inhalation and consumption of water leads to direct accumulation in our bodies. Macroplastic in rivers affects our infrastructure and communities by blocking drainages, exacerbating flood risk and damage, and negatively affecting tourism, fisheries, and shipping. And plastic also impacts the river ecosystem and biodiversity via wildlife entanglement, ingestion, and smothering, leakage of chemical additives, and transport of non-native species and pathogens. Plastic continues to break down into smaller and smaller pieces. As microplastic breaks down, it becomes nanoplastic…which might be the most dangerous to health of living things – including humans.

8/18/2025 I’m Plastic Free 4 Reasons to Choose Plastic Free, All Natural Fibers Over Synthetic Fibers - Manufacturers give our fabrics trade names, so even when we look at the fiber content label inside our clothing, it isn’t clear that it is made from plastic. Buying clothing that is made from natural fibers is the fastest and safest way to save our planet.

8/4/2025 Yale Environment 360 World Cannot Recycle Its Way Out of Plastics Crisis - The world churns out more than 200 times as much plastic today as it did in 1950, and production is only rising. Microscopic bits of plastic waste have been found nearly everywhere. Many of the more than 16,000 chemicals used in plastics — flame retardants, fillers, dyes — can harm human health, and fetuses, infants, and young children are particularly vulnerable. Without efforts to stem the use of plastic, production is on track to nearly triple by 2060.

7/25/2025 BBC How do the microplastics in our bodies affect our health? - The use of plastics in society first came into being on a large scale in about the 1920s, and we see a big increase from the 1960s onwards. In a study published in 2024, scientists found that consumption of the particles has increased sixfold since 1990, particularly in various global hotspots including the US, China, parts of the Middle East, North Africa and Scandinavia. In February 2025, scientists identified microplastics in the brains of human cadavers. Most notably, those who had been diagnosed with dementia prior to their death had up to 10 times as much plastic in their brains compared to those without the condition. Because humans are consuming so many different types of plastic, it's both unlikely and impractical, without vast sources of funding, for researchers to be able to identify a direct link between ingesting microplastics and one particular disease….but there is mounting evidence that they are impacting health.

5/23/2025 I am plastic Free How to Go Plastic Free for Beginners. Your First 10 Items! - Start with 10 items, step by step and then progress slowly to more once you feel more confident.5/2/2025 Beyond Plastics/The Hill Judith Enck: With Trump’s tariffs in play, it’s the perfect opportunity for a national bottle bill - For over 40 years now, residents of 10 states (California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Vermont) have reaped the benefits of state-level refundable container deposit laws, known as “bottle bills.” Here’s how it works: I go to the store and buy a can of soda or bottle of beer and I pay a nickel or dime deposit, which is refunded to me when I return the empty container either to the store or a local small business, known as a redemption center. A dime is better because you see a higher return rate. Instead of sitting by while big companies sell more plastic bottles, Congress should adopt a national bottle bill.  

4/10/2025 Super Age 7 Foods and Beverages That Have the Most Microplastics (and What to Eat Instead) – A list and a short video. I found myself wondering if we can really avoid the microplastics in apples and carrots…since some of them are from soil/water rather than packaging. There might not be a good choice out there since microplastic is everywhere.

4/8/2025 New York Times What Are Microplastics Doing to Our Bodies? This Lab Is Racing to Find Out. – This article is from last April, but it provides some information about the type of research that is being conducted…trying to understand the impact of microplastics on our bodies.

Toxic-Free Future 2024 Report Card – How does your grocery store rank?