{"id":367681,"date":"2026-03-27T08:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T08:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/367681\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T08:00:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T08:00:12","slug":"are-plastics-poisoning-us-the-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/367681\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Plastics Poisoning Us? | The Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Environment<\/a><\/p>\n

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\n March 26, 2026<\/p>\n

A Netflix documentary exposes plastic\u2019s health harms but misses its climate connection.<\/p>\n

Ad Policy<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"CoveringThis story is part of\u00a0Covering Climate Now<\/a>, a global journalism collaboration cofounded by\u00a0Columbia Journalism Review\u00a0and\u00a0The Nation strengthening coverage of the climate story.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlastics are everywhere in modern life,\u201d Covering Climate Now wrote<\/a> in a \u201cClimate Beat\u201d column in February 2024. \u201cAnd since plastics are forever, the world\u2019s seas are now littered with massive gyres of plastic waste\u2014billions of tons of used food containers, water bottles, fishing gear, and other items that fragment into microplastics, \u2018wreaking havoc on marine ecosystems,\u2019 NOAA warns<\/a>, and increasingly on human health<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now a new documentary from Netflix dramatizes those health effects, especially for people trying to get pregnant. The Plastic Detox<\/a> follows six US couples as they struggle with low sperm counts and other barriers to conceiving a child. Advising them is Dr. Shanna Swan, an epidemiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York, whose research documents how endocrine-disrupting chemicals were giving baby boys \u201csomewhat smaller penises\u201d and, later in life, lower sperm counts. Her work has been featured on 60 Minutes and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Swan helps the couples limit their exposure to plastics by having them buy non-synthetic clothes\u2014textiles, she says, are the largest source of microplastics in the environment\u2014ditching cleaning and personal care products sold in plastic containers, and the like. Such detoxing improves sperm counts and other pregnancy-related variables, and some of the couples do become parents, though Swan is careful to acknowledge that this was \u201cnot a quote unquote scientific study,\u201d since it lacked a control group and robust sample size.<\/p>\n

With the world now producing twice as much plastic<\/a> as it did in the 1990s, The Plastic Detox also highlights a related problem: the industry\u2019s long-standing lie that recycling is a viable solution to the problem of plastic waste. Just as scientists at Exxon were privately telling management by the 1970s that continuing to burn fossil fuels could end civilization as we know it, plastic companies\u2019 own scientists have for decades been telling them that recycling is not a real solution. In the words of an internal document described in The Plastics Detox and cited by the California Department of Justice in its ongoing lawsuit against ExxonMobil<\/a>, \u201crecyclability at scale is not financially viable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oddly, what The Plastic Detox does not do is make the climate connection to plastics. The closest the documentary comes is to point out that almost all plastics in use today are made from petroleum. Indeed, the plastics industry and the fossil fuel industry are in many respects the same enterprise, and both sides of that enterprise want to keep production levels climbing. As the February 2024 \u201cClimate Beat\u201d column noted, \u201cthe oil industry sees plastics as a lifeline in the face of growing global efforts to transition away from fossil fuel in the name of climate survival. BP, for example, projects that plastics will account for 95 percent<\/a> of demand for new oil over the next few decades. \u2018Oil executives like to talk about how plastic can help \u201cfuture-proof\u201d the industry as the world moves away from its product for energy,\u2019 journalist Amy Westervelt told Covering Climate Now.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ubiquity of plastics in our modern lives amounts to conducting a mass experiment on today\u2019s children and their children without their consent, Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and epidemiologist, says in The Plastic Detox. Landrigan is referring to the threat that endocrine-disrupting chemicals pose to humans\u2019 ability to reproduce. But his point also applies to the ubiquity of fossil fuels, which still account for 80 percent of humanity\u2019s total energy consumption. Solid journalism can help the public and policymakers understand that plastics and fossil fuels are two sides of the same coin, a coin that science is increasingly telling us should be left behind.<\/p>\n

Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump\u2019s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire through the region and into Europe. A new \u201cforever war\u201d\u2014with an ever-increasing likelihood of American troops on the ground\u2014may very well be upon us.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

As we\u2019ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In these dark times, independent journalism is uniquely able to uncover the falsehoods that threaten our republic\u2014and civilians around the world\u2014and shine a bright light on the truth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Nation\u2019s experienced team of writers, editors, and fact-checkers understands the scale of what we\u2019re up against and the urgency with which we have to act. That\u2019s why we\u2019re publishing critical reporting and analysis of the war on Iran, ICE violence at home, new forms of voter suppression emerging in the courts, and much more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But this journalism is possible only with your support.<\/p>\n

This March, The Nation needs to raise $50,000 to ensure that we have the resources for reporting and analysis that sets the record straight and empowers people of conscience to organize. Will you donate today?<\/a><\/p>\n

Mark Hertsgaard<\/a><\/p>\n

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Mark Hertsgaard is the environment correspondent of The Nation and the executive director of the global media collaboration Covering Climate Now<\/a>. His new book is Big Red\u2019s Mercy:\u00a0 The Shooting of Deborah Cotton and A Story of Race in America<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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