[titzer]

By mass, 8 million tons of plastic garbage is estimated to be entering the oceans every year. The oceans, with their hundreds of thousands of miles of shoreline and reef breaks, are the world's broadest, most powerful erosive force. The oceans grind up our plastic garbage into micro and nanoplastics and clearly that is now being swept up into the hydro cycle and rained back on Earth. This is not that hard to grasp.

Yes, artificial fibers are bad. They cause lots of microplastic problems in local water sources. I agree we should stop wearing them. But this problem is huge and global.

The risk to human health from microplastics seems lower than some other types of pollution. But microplastics are persistent pollutants that don't go away after a year or two or five; they might survive centuries. They sicken and kill aquatic life, over and over. They are poison pills that never stop being poisonous.

It's truly bad shit. We need to think about whether we want to address this problem at a global scale or not. If not, then we are accepting a big loss of biological life due to our utter carelessness.