Plastics

Walker-Franklin, a researcher at Research Triangle Institute International, and University of Georgia environmental engineer Jambeck debut with a solid overview of the history, production, and dangers of plastics. In the 1860s, German chemist Christian Friedrich Schönbein created the first plastics by mixing cellulose from cotton with sulfur and nitric acid. Chemists tinkered with different formulas over the ensuing decades, but it wasn’t until the American military adopted plastics for use in parachutes and aircraft components during WWII that they became ubiquitous. Walker-Franklin and Jambeck note that while plastics are useful for packaging, construction, and automotive parts, the difficulty of disposing of them poses serious challenges to public health. They discuss studies showing that chemicals leached from plastics negatively impact sperm quality in animals and that humans consume more than 70,000 tiny pieces of degraded microplastics per year, contributing to tissue inflammation and irritable bowel syndrome. Solutions include banning the most harmful polymers, developing better waste management infrastructure, and creating sustainable alternatives for use in food and product delivery. Walker-Franklin and Jambeck prioritize breadth over depth, but they nonetheless offer a competent summary of the scientific literature on plastic’s harms, enriched by historical background. This gets the job done. (Aug.)