A Poison Like No Other

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’severywhere—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 thanplastic 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 – itstoughness – means it never really goes away. It just gets smaller and smaller: eventually small enough to enter your lungsor 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 oftoxicity: plastics contain at least 10,000 different chemicals. Those chemicals are linked to diseases from diabetes tohormone disruption to cancers. A Poison Like No Other is the first book to fully explore this public health threat, following the intrepid scientists whotravel 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 torecognize the invisible particles all around us.